Irv and Joanne Glenn interview (transcript)

Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 1
RANCH FAMILY ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: Irv and Joanne Glenn
Place of Interview: Glenn Home, Farr West, Utah
Date of Interview: March 5, 2010
Interviewer/Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Radio Shack Cassette Recorder: CTR-122, with Radio Shack Omni-directional microphone: ATR35s
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams (20 May 2010); Irv Glenn approved by phone
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. Glenn talks about his childhood and experiences growing up on a ranch in northern Utah and southern Idaho. He talks about his career as a farrier and horse trainer as an adult.
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
IG = Irv Glenn
JG = Joanne Glenn
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “you know” and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Tape 1 of 2: A]
RW: Well I am at Irv and Joanne Glenn’s home in Farr West. It is beautiful March day; March 5, 2010.
Irv, do you want to give me your full name, where you were born and your birth date?
IG: It’s Irvin E. Glenn. I was born in Preston, Idaho on July 12, 1949.
RW: Was your family from the Preston, Idaho area?
IG: My mother was born and raised in Preston. My father, Adam, was born in Wellsville, Utah. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 2
RW: What was your mother’s name?
IG: Pearl.
RW: Pearl.
IG: Pearl Esplin.
RW: Pearl Esper?
IG: Esplin.
RW: Esplin, okay.
IG: Yeah, um-hmm.
RW: Now, let’s talk a little bit about your dad for a minute. So he’s from Wellsville – was he involved in a ranch environment in Wellsville?
IG: My grandfather, John B. Glenn, homesteaded the Blue Creek Valley, which is approximately, from Tremonton, probably west about six or eight miles, and then north about another ten miles. My grandpa John and my grandma, Elizabeth, were married in Wellsville and went to the ranch in a horse and buggy.
RW: What kind of homestead was it?
IG: It was a dry farm cattle operation.
RW: What time period were they married: your grandparents?
IG: Well my grandma was born in 1889, and they had to be married in the middle 1900s. I’m not really that sure.
RW: But they were pretty early [residents] in Wellsville?
IG: Oh yeah. My grandma remembers when she was a younger girl, when they were still carrying firearms in Wellsville, yeah.
RW: How did your dad get up to Preston?
IG: He was introduced to my mother through a friend, and that’s where he met my mother because that’s where she was from, in Preston.
RW: And they settled up there?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 3
IG: Yeah. We were there until I was about – I was probably five or six years old in Preston. And then my dad and my uncle went in partners and bought the ranch which is located 40 miles northwest of Soda Springs, Idaho, right on the Blackfoot River, right next to the borders of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. And that’s where I grew up.
RW: So your father and his brother –
IG: His brother-in-law.
RW: Brother-in-law, okay. So your dad is on a homestead there in Wellsville with his parents (or out in that Blue Creek area)?
IG: Um-hmm, yeah. What they did – and this is basically the way we spent my whole entire life – they had a summer home, or a winter home and a ranch that was work during the summer. Because in the winter times it is impossible to do anything, there’s just too much snow. So the cattle were always moved to a location where they were fed during the winter.
RW: Where would that winter ranch?
IG: Well the winter place for my grandpa was over by Tremonton. And my dad’s was – they had a feed lot in Soda Springs, and then later on they trucked a lot of them down to Preston and put them on a place called the Sandhill, where the snow didn’t pile up real deep. And that’s where they’d feed them. And we never had a large herd of cows: we had 300, but we had 3,000 acres of dry farm. We raised a lot of wheat, so it was a combination of farming and ranching both. But I tried to stay away from the farming and concentrate on the ranching [laughs].
RW: How many children were in your family?
IG: Just me.
RW: Just one?
IG: Um-hmm. Yeah, I was raised – my dad had this thing about an only child, and he raised me – I felt like a hired hand my whole life. He was very strict, maybe to the point where a lot of people thought he was mean. But he’d been a cowboy his whole life and he wasn’t going to have a son that was a spoiled only child. I had a lot of responsibility from the time I was very young.
I remember one time in Wellsville, going to my grandpa’s place. They used to, when they’d bring the hay wagon in with the loose hay in it – this was with a team of horses, and they’d bring the team up under the buck rake from the barn. And I’d be riding the work horse, and I’d back the work horse up and drop the buck rake into the hay and then ride it forward, and they’d bring it up and then pull it into the barn because that’s where they put all the hay was in the top there for the cows. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 4
RW: How old would you have been when you started doing that?
IG: Oh, seven. When I was between nine and ten I was taking a saddle horse and a pack horse out on the Indian Reservation line and fixing fence, because they would cut the fence and run their cows in on our grain. So my dad would send me out early in the morning with a pack horse and a saddle horse, and I would go up and fix whatever fence was broke; be gone all day and then come back to the ranch house. We had no power, no running water. If you wanted water, you went out – we had the old hand pump. And I remember you had to pump that 12 times to get the water before it would come up into the bucket.
RW: Priming the pump.
IG: Prime the pump. And I’ve always been scared of the dark and he’d make me go out there at night and get a bucket of water. I don’t know why I’ve been afraid of the dark, I just have. But boy, I mean I would hurry out there and I’d pump that thing as hard as I could, and fill that bucket up and grab it, and run back into the house.
RW: So when you’re talking about going out and checking the fence, and fixing the fences – is this out on your place out in [Idaho?]
IG: This was out on the Blackfoot, yeah.
RW: Is that what you consider your home ranch, out there?
IG: Uh-huh, yeah. That was the home ranch.
RW: Well one of the things I’ve asked people, Irv, is to kind of give me a year in the life [of a rancher]. And with you it would be interesting to start the perspective of the year in the life of a rancher from a child.
IG: Uh-huh.
RW: But then move forward.
IG: Okay.
RW: Because you’re getting different tasks as you age it sounds like.
IG: Sure, yeah you do.
RW: So when you’re real young, what would an only child of a rancher – what would you be doing?
IG: Well, the only thing I can remember doing when I was really, really young was my dad – he shod our horses, and I always got the job of standing there by their head and holding them while he would put shoes on them. And I hated it [laughs] because if they moved he Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 5
would cuss me or whatever. And he wasn’t trying to be mean, he just working hard and flies and sweat and all that kind of stuff. So, that was kind of one of my jobs early on. And keeping things picked up and cleaned up. My dad was a fanatic about keeping things clean and nice.
And I had my horse from the time I’ve been really old enough to remember. Like I say, maybe seven, eight, nine years old I always had this one horse that I pretty much rode until I got up maybe nine or ten, then I would just ride whatever he told me to ride.
RW: How come your dad, when he’s shoeing a horse and you’re holding its head and keeping it calm – what kind of skills did you acquire? What did you do to make sure they were still and quiet?
IG: Well I tried to make sure that I kept the flies off of them, and I’d pet them on the nose, and talk to them, and just kind of keep their attention. And I think probably what I developed was a big love for horses. I mean they’ve just always been such a part of my life. They’re just such a magnificent animal. You know, I learned things as I was growing up younger, that have carried on into my – because I’ve trained horses and shoed horses my whole life now, see. So that was something that I never, ever forgot.
RW: Since you mentioned that you were a farrier – are those some skills that you mainly learned from your father?
IG: Oh yeah. See, my father passed away when I was 17, from cancer. And I had the option at that time of either staying there with my mom and buying out – continuing on my dad’s share – or letting my uncle buy us out. Well, at 17 years old, and that’s all you’ve done all your life – I wanted to go to the city. I wanted to see what life was.
So my mom had graduated from BYU, and she had a teaching degree. So we came to Ogden, and she went to work as a teacher. And I was kind of lost because I didn’t know what to do; I’d never worked for anybody. So I just started breaking a few horses and doing stuff like that. Well I would hire these people to come out and shoe my horses, and it was just like, “This is horrible. What are you doing?” And eventually that’s what I went to school – I started kind of doing it myself, and there was just too many blind areas there. So I went to school in Oklahoma City and got a degree, and then continued on from there.
RW: What are “blind areas”? What does that mean?
IG: Well like, how much hoof can you trim off without making them bleed and how to use the tools.
RW: Um-hmm. So you had some skills watching your father.
IG: Yeah, I knew how he trimmed the hoof, and rasped it down, and put the shoe and nailed it on. But, which direction did you turn the horseshoe nails? Or, where do you hit the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 6
shoe to make it do this? Or, how far can you trim that foot? Or, which way do you trim the foot to make a horse’s feet straight? Or, how close do you fit them so they don’t pull the shoe? Just a lot of questions like that. I’d watched it a million times, but I just had so many questions, and I didn’t want to do it unless I knew what I was doing.
RW: So, I want to get back to your childhood a little bit, but I’d like to follow up – Oklahoma City? So is there a farrier school?
IG: Yes, Oklahoma School of Horse Shoeing, yeah.
RW: How long were you there?
IG: Six weeks. And it was tough [laughs].
RW: What was tough about it?
IG: Well horse shoeing in itself is probably one of the toughest things that any man will ever do, because you’re in –
RW: Physical tough, or mental tough?
IG: Physical tough, not mental, no. You don’t have to be a genius to be a horse shoer, but physically you have to be pretty strong because you’re lifting up part of that animal, your knees are bent, your back – you’re bent over like this and your head’s up here. So physically it’s very demanding, especially if you get a horse that will start moving around. So that’s the part of it, that’s the hardest is becoming conditioned.
So when I went to school there I mean I thought I was pretty tough, and I probably was. But we were in a dormitory – it was kind of like the military – we were in a dormitory upstairs in this metal building, and down below there was 12 gas powered forges. So in the morning at six o’clock we would go in for classroom instruction. They’d load us on a bus and they’d take us out to a ranch, and we would be hands-on shoeing horses. One day you’d do the front – you always had a partner – one day you’d do the front feet, the next day you’d do the back feet.
But then when we’d get back to school at night, then they would assign us a shoe to make. So we’d go downstairs, and here’d be these 12 gas forges all burning. All that heat going right up through [to] where we slept. And it was in June and the humidity was like 100%. So you’d have to finish that shoe and have it all done, ready to display in the classroom the next morning. So when you’d go upstairs to go to bed, it was horrible. So a combination of the humidity and the heat and then the actual work itself – by the time you got back at night, I mean your legs were just shaking. But it didn’t take me very long to get in shape.
RW: How old were you when you went to this school?
IG: I was probably 20 something, right in there, 20, 21 – something like that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 7
RW: What were the other students – what were their backgrounds?
IG: From all walks of life. I remember this one guy that was there that was a baker from Oregon. And he didn’t make it – he lasted about two weeks and couldn’t handle it physically anymore. There was a guy from Australia that worked on a ranch in Australia; and he was probably the toughest man I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a guy there from Hawaii that worked on – I forget the name now – but he worked on the biggest cattle ranch in Hawaii. And they had sent him there to learn how to shoe the ranch horses.
So it was just kind of a mix of people and they would come and go. Every two weeks they would start a new class. After two weeks, they would kind of move you up; you were far enough ahead that you would work with somebody new that was just coming in. So you got to kind of help them, and explain to them, and teach them what you’d already learned. And then just continue on until everything kind of became automatic.
And I thought, when I come back from Oklahoma I thought, “Man, I’m a horse shoer. I’m tough and I’m a horse shoer.” And I remember coming home and the first horse that I shoed was for some people over here in Plain City – it took me like three hours because I had never had to shoe one all the way around. And I was just totally exhausted. And I thought, “What the heck am I doing?” But I loved it; I loved the freedom.
Because I come from a background of freedom, I mean you know, we had responsibilities but we never looked at our watch and seen what time it was. We had a certain amount of things to do from the time we got up in the morning, which was daylight. Before daylight we were usually up, had horses saddled, had a cup of coffee, be gone all day, come home, eat one meal, and go to bed and do it again. But there was not this huge – like I say, we didn’t look at our watch every five minutes. We’d look up and say, “Oh, we got so many hours of daylight left.” Whether I was sitting on a horse, or I was sitting on a crawler – because in them days they never had any rubber tired tractors, they were all these big crawlers that we pulled everything with.
RW: What did you use the crawlers for?
IG: Because we had dry farm; we raised wheat. So in the fall, after they cut the wheat, you’d go in there with a set of diggers – two full sets, they were like 30 feet with two rod weeders on behind. And the diggers would dig the ground up, and then the rod weeders would roll backwards and they’d flip the roots of the plants up on top, you see?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: And then in the spring, of course you were planting grain. And you rotated, one year you’d grow it here and then the next year you’d grow it here. And you’d rotate your crops around. There was no irrigation like there is now. Everything we relied on was Mother Nature.
RW: So this was you and your dad and your uncle?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 8
IG: And my cousin Steve, my cousin Ron, and my cousin Mike.
RW: And this is your mom’s brother and his kids?
IG: This is my dad’s sister’s family.
RW: Okay. You said it was your dad’s brother-in-law, so it’s your dad’s sister’s family?
IG: Right, um-hmm.
RW: What were their names? What was your uncle’s name?
IG: John Sharp. You’re from Cache Valley – you’ve seen the Sharp Trucking?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: That’s my cousin Ivan or Zan.
RW: Okay.
IG: Which I probably haven’t seen since he was about this tall. But my cousin, Steve, him and I were about eight months apart and these guys were all like brothers to me, really. You know, you ask me if I had a family, but they were all like brothers to me. But Steve and I were close to the same age, so we did everything together. I mean all the time we were growing up. I mean we might not be together every day, all day – he might be off doing something else, you know. But we pretty much grew up together.
And he went on to be a ranch manager. He worked on the Spanish Ranch and the Wine Cup. He managed the 7H over in Ruby Valley. Carlin, Nevada – he’d managed a big ranch over there that here a few years ago was one of the last known places in the United States to get electrical power. And then he went from there to Eureka and ran the Saddler Brown, which was the original Governor’s ranch of the state of California that’s owned by the Lufkin family from Cache Valley that invented the Hesston Bale wagon. And he was a diabetic and had a seizure, went into a coma here about ten years ago, and died right there on the ranch. But that was his whole life.
RW: Wow. One thing I’ve noticed with these interviews is, especially when I’m reading the transcripts, everybody is somehow connected to somebody else: either family-wise, ranch-wise, working-wise. There’s some shoestring relation between everybody.
IG: Hmm.
RW: You know a lot of the ranches you’re talking about [that] your cousin managed – I’ve either interviewed someone that also worked on that ranch; it’s just like there are layers, this lifestyle.
IG: Yeah, and I think the thing is, you know to work your way from being just a cowboy on a horse everyday, to a ranch manager – it takes these steps and these years of experience. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 9
And a lot of guys start out, but they never finish because the pay is not good by any means. The hours are long and it’s dirty and it’s hard work. The life of a cowboy is not this glamorous, as much as people might think; it’s hard work. You know, he stuck with it because he loved what he was doing. Like I’ve always loved what I’ve been doing.
The doctors have told me I should have quit doing what I’m doing a long time ago, but I can’t because I feel like at my age in life I’m entitled to do what I want to do until the day I die. So I’ll continue to shoe and ride horses [laughing] until I can’t get up off that couch!
RW: Right. You know, I’ve heard a lot of farriers talk about the toll it takes, the physical toll on your body.
IG: Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s such an art; it’s something that’s never changed. The only thing that’s really changed as far as farrier work, or horse shoeing, was years ago blacksmith made parts for everything. He re-lined wheels, and he made parts for the wagons, and he shod horses too. But you know, what he used to heat his steel with was like a coke forger, whatever. And so now, you know, they call a lot of shoers blacksmiths, but they’re not technically blacksmiths because they don’t do blacksmith work. But you know, now days the tools are all the same. I mean I can make a pair of handmade shoes, but I use a propane forge, instead of a coke forge; see what I mean?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: So that’s really – the hand tools and everything are just identical to what they have been for you know, hundreds of years.
RW: Well I kind of interrupted you. You were talking about being at the farrier school and coming home and starting out your career.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: What was it like being a ranch boy, growing up and then coming to Ogden?
IG: Oh it was a shock. It was a culture shock because I dressed different than everybody else, and people would stare at me.
RW: What was your clothing like?
IG: Just like this.
RW: So you’ve got some blue jeans.
IG: Yeah, blue jeans.
RW: Boots, nice collared shirt.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 10
IG: Yeah, and a buttoned shirt to the top.
RW: Long sleeves.
IG: Yeah, and my hair was always cut really short, you know. And people would stare at me. And I really took offense to it for a while, and then I realized that it was more curiosity than anything. And that really hasn’t changed – people still stare.
RW: Joanne, you mentioned coming into this lifestyle after meeting and knowing Glenn and being married. But it sounds like you’ve had horses before that time. What is your impression, from somebody outside looking in, when you’re hearing these stories? What goes through your mind?
This is Glenn’s wife Joanne.
JG: It’s really hard to be with someone who everybody stares at all the time. We dated a lot in Salt Lake. He always wears a hat and people stare at us; used to stare at us a lot. Irv has his picture taken all the time because I think there’s something about a relic of the past, or something like that.
He was a lot more quiet than most of the other guys I dated. There’s a certain amount of real independence there, and he talked a little bit about that. It’s hard; it really is hard to fit into his life. We thought so differently – talk about a different perspective: it’s a totally different perspective.
And I think before our first date I went to a store and I was buying a few things and he was waiting for me outside (it was in a mall). He waited outside because he didn’t feel very comfortable in the store I was in. And the young girl waiting on me said – I just happened to mention, “I’m going out with this different guy, I really need to buy something that would be really cool for him.” And she said, “Well who is he?” And I said, “Well he’s a cowboy.” And all the girls in that store went out to look at Irv through the window.
And I think that people have this idea, this romantic, wonderful idea – and I don’t want to shatter their illusions, and it’s not that it’s not that great because it was very romantic, and there was a lot to it. But it’s not what they think; it’s tough. They’re tough and they have their own independence; they don’t necessarily need you as much as someone else might need you – at least they don’t show that.
RW: Irv is shaking his head, “yes.” [Laughs]
JG: Uh-huh. And that’s one of the things that gets misinterpreted by families, by other people in their life: that they don’t need anyone that they don’t love like everybody else does, or have that passion about them. They do; it’s just that they have learned, like his father taught him, “Look, you’re a man, you don’t show this. I don’t care what you do, that never comes through.” And he picked up on that whole thing. I think a lot of his family Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 11
got alienated by the fact that he has that ethic and that thing underneath. And that still water runs very deep. And so now I understand a lot of the things that, you know, I’d read about, or I’d thought about – he broke a lot of those myths for me about things that people think. And it can be very romantic, but you have to understand where this all came from.
I had a real hard time. I would ask him questions, and when something doesn’t fit with me (I’m a psych nurse), I just keep asking questions until I get that answered. And it takes a long time to figure that out; it takes this huge long time, you know. I would agonize over a question for days or weeks, and you know, he would tell me the answer and it just didn’t work for me. You know, I kept trying to adjust this to what we feel is normal in society. They are not the same, and I know that because I look at his friends too and they are just like him. They’ve been alienating their family, or you know, certain family members can’t understand.
And I was reading some of the things before that you sent to us – it’s almost like post traumatic stress syndrome, where some of those things that were so traumatic in their life, they have a hard time with. You know, if you take them back there, they have to work some thing to kind of figure out exactly what happened, or how that happened, or why it did. So I could read what you were sending us in a different way than probably Irv would. So the perspective is totally different.
RW: And you’re referring to the letter that I sent: I kind of explained our project a little bit.
JG: Exactly.
RW: I see. Thank you; that is a really interesting perspective.
Well I’m just wondering, Irv, in regards to that streak of independence and what Joanne said –
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: Someone once told me that occupations that are so inclusive, you know, ranching being one of them – there’s an element of danger at all times.
IG: Um-hmm, yes; at all times.
RW: And you really, from what people have told me in these interviews, and also my observation – you’ve got to trust the people you work with.
IG: You bet.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about that? There’s that fierce independence, but yet you really rely on other people, or an animal.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 12
IG: Well I think one of the biggest things with the true cowboys that I’ve known all my life – they have this deep, burning respect. Not only for each other, but for animals. And a deep love for animals. But if you can’t take a man by his word, then he’s not a man as far as I’m concerned. Because everything that you did in business when I was growing up was done with a handshake; nothing was ever put on paper. And you’re also taught a deep respect for your father, your grandfather – anybody that’s older than you are – you have a deep respect for those people.
So I think this respect thing – and that’s what’s hard about, you know, being out in life because with me, I trust and respect everybody until they prove to me that I can’t. And if you don’t have that respect for the men that you work with when you’re in ranching (because there’s a lot of times that your safety depends on exactly what they’re doing), so they have to be men of their word, and you have to respect them. You know, and me being younger than all the ranch hands, I had this huge amount of respect for everybody that ever come around there. And some of them proved themselves wrong, which was a life lesson, you know. I looked up to them and respected them, and they would do something my dad would say wasn’t right. It was kind of a learning thing that carries clear through your life.
But as far as the family thing goes, you know, there’s just certain things in my life whether it’s my family or my friends that I just won’t tolerate. I won’t tolerate disrespect, whether it’s from my own kids or friends or whatever. Whether its disrespect for my wife, or to me directly or whatever, I just will not tolerate that. So I just shut it off.
As far as the emotional part of things, you know, there’s not very many days go by when you grew up on a ranch that you don’t get a bump or a bruise. Well you’re not going to just go running crying to your mom, or running to your dad and say, “I got this owie, owie,” because you better buck up and be tough. So you learn to be very independent, very tough. But you don’t show emotions because you’ve heard the term, “big boys don’t cry.” Well that’s instilled in you. If you get bucked off, unless you broke something you get back on and you go down the trail with the rest of them, regardless. And I’ve had to choke back the tears a few times, you know, because I’ve been hurt.
[END Tape 1 of 2: A]
[BEGIN Tape 1 of 2: B]
IG: -- only person in my life that’s ever been able to actually bring out the emotion, you know. And it’s not that I don’t love and I don’t feel – I just don’t show it. I’m not a hold hands, touchy-feely kind – because that’s the way we were raised. We didn’t hug and that; I mean, you knew your dad loved you and you knew your mom loved you, but there wasn’t any hugging and stuff like that going on. And so naturally as I get older I’m the same way.
RW: Well I remember once talking to a good friend and her husband had a lot of brothers, and they were living away from the family at the time. And she said, “My husband gets on the phone all the time with his brothers and they talk about football, or this or that and the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 13
other.” And we both said, “I bet that’s a way of saying ‘I love you’, but it’s not coming right out and saying ‘I love you.’”
IG: Yeah, right; exactly.
RW: So what I’m hearing you say is there is a lot of ways to show love.
IG: Oh, of course, yeah.
RW: And some of them are, like you said, more actions – showing respect. With your mother when you were injured: bumps and bruises – she must have had to kind of be on the same page with your dad?
IG: Well, she tried to coddle and stuff like that, and he wouldn’t tolerate that. I mean you know of course, I assumed that I was just devastated hurt. You know how moms are – they want to feel the same way. Well my dad wasn’t trying to be mean, he knows what a bump, a bruise, or a break is, but he wanted me to be tough because I was an only child and he didn’t want anybody to think that his son was a wimp. So he would not tolerate that. So the next day I was up, right out there with everybody else doing my job.
RW: Well back on your home ranch, there’s your family: your mom and dad, and your aunt, and uncle and cousins.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: But then you mentioned hired hands. Who would come in and what would they be doing?
IG: They were hired to be cowboys. Guys were always kind of drifting in and out of there. We’d have sometimes three, maybe four, just depending. But you know, they had to do a little farm work and they had to do a little fencing. You know a lot of cowboys just want to sit on a horse all day, and that’s great, but that’s just not the way life works.
RW: Well let’s talk about the cycle of ranch family. Because you’re not always on a horse; what are you doing?
IG: Well we had 3,000 acres of farm land, so a lot of times we were working the ground, or we were fixing fence, or repairing machinery – a lot of repairing machinery – fixing things up, or putting a new roof on the implement shed. You know, just a lot of things; there’s always something to do.
RW: What kind of haying – what kind of equipment did you use, what style?
IG: Well we didn’t put up any hay.
RW: Okay.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 14
IG: No, because all the cattle went to a feed yard during the winter.
RW: Okay.
IG: And so the hay was bought locally and fed. So that was one thing I’m glad we didn’t do, was hay.
JG: But tell her about your uncle that wasn’t really your uncle.
IG: Yeah, but he was –
JG: Where did he come from?
IG: Well I don’t know where he come from, but that was for my grandpa – that was a whole different – my Uncle Joe. He wasn’t related, but we called him Uncle Joe. But you know, that goes back to the days when they settled the ranch in Blue Creek and everything was done with teams of horses. This guy we called Uncle Joe evidently wandered on there and my grandpa hired him. But he had a deformity: his knee caps were on the back of his [legs] instead of here [pointing to legs] and so his leg from here went this way, and he had to scoot. But he was the fastest grain sack tier in the Blue Creek Valley. They’d have contests to see who could sack wheat because the horses would pull the combine you know, the grain would go through the thrasher and it would come out and come right in, they’d have to bag it. So that’s kind of getting off on a different deal.
RW: But that’s the lifestyle your dad grew up with?
IG: Oh yeah. My dad was – now I’ve been told he was five, six – I don’t know for sure, that seems awful young – he was coming up the lane on a horse, and he decided he was going to run and he took off, and the saddle slipped underneath the horse and his foot caught in the stirrup and it drug him. And he was like in a coma for a long time. And he had to take medication his whole life because he had seizures. But that was just one experience that he was like very little at that time. Yeah, that happened on my Grandpa John’s ranch in Blue Creek.
JG: But you were never allowed to run a horse.
IG: Oh no, no, no. The only time you ever ran a horse when I grew up was if you were going to catch something, you know. Not saying that I didn’t when my dad wasn’t looking.
[Laughing]
RW: Well I’m wondering if you’re feeding your cows during the winter at the feed lot. When are your mother cows calving? And where is that taking place at?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 15
IG: Well they’d bring them back up on the lower range early, early in the spring. And we wouldn’t calve until like March, April, middle of April, where a lot of them are calving in February now. But we were always late.
Ranching has changed so much from the time I was a kid to now. It’s always been a business, but when I was growing up the price of beef would go up just a little bit every year. And you wasn’t getting rich, but you could always rely on it. Not like it is now: now it’s become a science. All the feed, everything has become such a science as it was compared to when I was a kid. You had 300 head of cows, and you raised so many replacement heifers and stuff like that. It was just like you always had a market, you always paid the bills and everything just kept rolling along. And it’s changed so much between then – we had horned Hereford cows; well you don’t even see them anymore, it’s all Angus now.
The whole economics of the whole ranching business has changed so much. I mean, everybody that we knew was really in the ranching business and everybody did good; nobody complained about not having money. Times were tough and you didn’t always have everything you wanted, but not like now: it’s become such a science. And the market is just like – you know. So it’s nothing like it used to be when I was a kid.
RW: Well when you moved to Ogden with your mother and went to farrier school and then struck out on your own, what kinds of folks were you shoeing horses for?
IG: I run an ad in the newspaper. Like I said, I started out training so I put an ad in the paper, and just told people that I was training horses because I really didn’t know how to do anything else. I’d tried working a few jobs, and I’m just not a work for another guy – I mean I lasted like a year or two at a couple of different things. I’m the kind of person, if I’m out there working my tail off and I feel like I’m doing a good job then leave me alone because I have a tendency to get a little upset if I have somebody riding me all the time. And that kind of caused me problems in my job because there’s always somebody that’s got their finger, pushing you in the back. I had kind of a bad temper. So I had a tendency to get myself in a little trouble [laughs].
So I was breaking – I had like three or four horses and I would just ride. And then like I say, I’d have these guys come and shoe.
RW: Where were you keeping your horses? When you said you had three or four horses were those three or four of your own, or three or four you were breaking at the time?
IG: Breaking, yeah. At that time I actually rented a place out in Hooper. I didn’t have any stalls or really anything like some of these facilities now. So it was kind of a rustic type deal. But I just did the only thing I really knew how to do. And that’s really kind of carried on through most of my life. You know, years ago when horse shoeing in the winter time would get slow, so I’d go drive truck for old LW Miller up there in Hyrum, or whatever I had to do. Then it eventually evolved into the point where I was so busy I had no time. I mean I was shoeing so many horses that I couldn’t even take a day off. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 16
RW: Was [your work] mostly here in the Weber county?
IG: Well for a while. I kind of semi-retired here about three years ago, but at that time I was shoeing for Tom Chambers (the basketball player), and Steve Smith (the football player down in Orem).
JG: Steve Young, right?
IG: Steve Young, yeah. And then I had a Western States Ranches in Las Vegas, Nevada. And then I was shoeing for John Blackburn, III – which is a huge wine grower from Northern California, in Sun Valley. And, so I was just like on the road, just shoeing horses all the time. And physically it just kind of got to me.
RW: When you’re going far away to shoe, then are you taking a trailer with all your equipment? How is that set up?
IG: Uh-huh. I have a trailer right here in the garage with all my equipment in it. I worked out of truck for a long time (a pickup truck); then I did go to a trailer. I have a trailer and it has a forge and it’s got my anvil and I’ve got drill presses and grinders, and shoe racks. It’s really pretty cool, you know. So I can just go there and open that thing up and I have everything I want right there. Because when I would go to Las Vegas, say, I would always shoe at least 30 horses, so you have to carry a lot of inventory because it’s all different sizes and stuff like that. Then go from there to Sun Valley, or whatever. And I still did that for quite a while after Joanne and I got married.
But it finally physically took a toll on me. My hands – I have no cartilage left in my hands, and my bones are flipped over, and I have arthritis in my joints; I have five compressed discs in my back, and my right knee is going to have to be replaced. But I just keep going because I think I’ve earned the right to do what I want do [laughs]. That sounds kind of odd, don’t it? I mean I think a lot of guys would just – well, and I have known a lot of shoers over the years that, you know, finally they just lay down and they won’t do anymore because I guess they can’t take the pain, or whatever. But I just can’t stop doing what I love to do. I’ve been semi-retired for three years and it about drove me crazy.
RW: So it sounds like you’re shoeing still, a little bit here and there?
IG: Yeah. You know, here’s the thing I think about being a cowboy, it’s this feeling of pride, accomplishment. To me, I think you honestly feel like you’re just a little bit more of a man than the average man. So when you reach that point in your life where you can’t continue to be that cowboy you’ve always been, it’s devastating: to my ego, to the way I felt about myself. I felt like you know, I can’t be what I’ve always been. It was hard, it was very hard. And now, even though I don’t do nearly what I used to do – I used to day work as a cowboy for Basin Land and Livestock (up here on the mountain and out here), you know stuff like that – even though I don’t do that anymore, at least I’m still out there Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 17
putting my hands on a horse everyday. And I still do a little training, Joanne and I. I’ve taught her a lot about training horses and she’s really become a hand, believe me.
RW: Oh, that’s a compliment.
IG: For a woman, I’ll tell you what – she can sit a horse. And I remember one time she said – because she would always have me get on her horses and warm them up. I’d say, you know, “You need to learn how to train your own horse.”
“Well I don’t want to be a horse trainer; I don’t need to know how to train a horse.” And I said, “Well, yes you do because in order to make them work correctly you’ve got to know the mechanics.”
And so it’s been fun teaching her that. And I love to teach. Over the years I’ve probably taught 50 guys how to shoe horses because I love to teach. And I love to give riding lessons. I love everything that’s involved with that lifestyle and I’m not afraid to teach people what I know.
RW: One of the things that’s really intriguing me about what you’re saying is this fact of knowing what’s important. You’re talking about the respect that you give to other people on site.
IG: Yes.
RW: And knowing what’s important to you.
IG: Yeah. Like with my family, I think I deserve a certain amount of respect, like you say, because I give that same respect. You know, like I have an older daughter that we never spoke for eight years. Everybody [said] “Well why don’t you go talk to your daughter?” Because her mother and I got divorced, well she decided to take a side and that’s strictly up to her, but I’m her father and she should respect me enough. Why should I go to her and make amends? And this went on for eight years until we finally broke the ice. And everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re too stubborn, and you’re too this.” And I say, “No, it’s not a matter of being stubborn, it’s a matter of respect.” I’m the father [laughs].
And I’m that way with people in general. You know, if you don’t respect me then you don’t have to have anything to do with me. Hopefully I’ll never do anything disrespectful toward you or your family or anything else because I’m just not that way. My friends that have been cowboys their whole lives, you know what? They’re that way. There isn’t a one of them that I wouldn’t do any kind of a deal with just a handshake because I know we have enough respect for each other that that’s the way it would be.
RW: You just said that Joanne’s quite a hand. Can you tell me what is a good hand?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 18
IG: Well somebody that knows the mechanic; we’re talking horses in general here—somebody that knows the mechanics of a horse. You know, I used to think that everybody could learn the mechanics of a horse, but they can’t.
RW: Why not?
IG: Well, because they just – between understanding it in their mind and putting it in their hands – there is so much feel with a horse. Okay, so like basically the mechanics are the bit controls the face, the reins control the shoulders, and your legs control the body of the horse. So everything in training is to build lightness. You know, there’s so many maneuvers, like the shoulder in, shoulder out – which is [??] movements. Pivot on the forehand, and pivot on the haunch, you know, getting them light in the face. But it is knowing when to let go and when they are responding. So to me a good hand is somebody that has feel and can sit up on a horse and understands the mechanics of what makes them work. And there’s not very many women – I mean there’s a lot of women, you know, that can ride – but, I don’t think there’s that many women – I don’t think there’s that many men, to be honest with you – that really understand the mechanics of a horse and what a great animal they are.
If you train them and ride them they way God intended them to move [laughs] – we’re not trying to teach them anything they don’t already know. Boy, you get me on this horse training thing and I’ll be going on and on and on.
JG: No, but I think it’s a respect for the horse.
IG: I have a deep love and a deep respect. And here’s what happens with a horse: they’re pretty smart, but they’re not the world’s smartest animal. So it’s like, “I’m going to teach you this and I’m going to show you. And you might fight me a little bit and I might have to spank you, but I still love you and I don’t want to hurt you, but I will spank you if I have to.” So, this whole training thing is a scope that’s brought clear out here, and everything comes right down to right above the saddle horn. So I think the reason I love horses so much is because I’ve seen so many of them that come from these, you know, wild whatever. And then all of a sudden – you know, our horses are so responsive that if you turn your body and look over your shoulder they’ll turn that direction.
RW: Um-hmm. I hate to say this, but –
IG: That’s an amazing animal; that’s an amazing animal, you know?
RW: Right. It’s like the cliché of being “one” with whatever. And it sounds like what you’re saying to me is you and the animal become as one.
IG: Well of course you do, of course you do; yeah. But like I say, the biggest thing to being a good hand, as far as I’m concerned, is the feel. You know how much pressure does it take to make this thing happen. Like when you put a spur on a horse, you don’t just take that spur and go boing! You know? You sit it on there and lift until the horse moves, and then Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 19
you let go, you see. And knowing that feel, knowing if that horse moves that far, let go. And then you just take this and it’s just this huge scope and you bring it all down to this little, teeny, refined, responsive animal that’s almost thinking exactly what you’re thinking, even though they’re not; they’re responding to your body movements – and ever so slight. I mean to me, that’s the most fascinating animal there is in the world [laughs].
JG: And that horse might [??]
IG: Yeah, see when I grew up – you know like we talked about animals being tools?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: Horses were tools, they weren’t pets; and they’re still not pets to me. I have a deep respect and love for them, they’re not pets; they’re large animals with a huge amount of power and not very many smarts. But they are a tool to do a job. When they continue not to be able to do that job, or refuse to do it – [makes cutting sound] they’re gone and you replace them with another one. Because they are tools of the trade, just like everything a cowboy wears. You go to the Poetry Gathering and you’ll see the scarves and the cuffs and all this stuff. And you just wonder, “Gee, I wonder what all that’s for?” But every particular article of clothing that they wear has a meaning.
RW: Like what?
IG: Well, like a scarf for instance. Silk scarves are made for in the winter time to keep the heat in, okay? The other thing is, to tie your hat on in a wind storm; put it over your face to keep the dust out of your face, you know. The cuffs, the leather cuffs: to keep from tearing your arms off. I used to wear them when I was shoeing sometimes. The long sleeve shirts: I took Joanne to Oklahoma with me one time and before we left I says, “You can’t dress like that.” And she goes – I said, “You’ve got to dress just like me.” And she goes well –
RW: Joanne’s laughing right now.
IG: Yeah. We’re going its 100 degrees and the humidity is 100%, what are you talking about? And I said, “Just, you’ll understand.”
JG: I had tank tops.
IG: So I went and bought her a great big hat, a shirt. I said, “You button that collar to the top and you wear that long sleeve shirt, okay?” So we got down there on that ranch in Oklahoma and every cowboy there – she looked around and every cowboy there was dressed just like I was, for a reason: to keep that sun off your body. Some of the other people that were dressed like she wanted to dress – heat exhaustion, passing out, you know.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 20
So there’s a reason why we wear these clothes. The high top boots is more of a Texas style because of snakes. I don’t know, the only reason I ever tucked my pants in my boots my whole life is because my dad did. I never even owned a straw hat until I met Joanne. I wore a felt hat summer and winter because a felt hat won’t blow off like a straw hat. So with everything I did, day work ranching or whatever. These guys would come out there in them straw hats and the next thing I know they’d be out just a sailing across there. There goes that hat; and mine was right where I put it. So there’s a reason for all that.
RW: I’ve heard from other cowboys that you can read a cowboy by clothing.
IG: Oh, definitely!
RW: But also by nuances – you’re sizing somebody up before they ever open their mouth?
IG: Oh yeah, oh definitely! [Laughs]
RW: Both of you folks are shaking your heads and laughing right now.
IG: Yeah.
RW: So what are you shaking your head about? What are you laughing at? What are you thinking? How are you reading somebody?
IG: By the clothes they wear.
IG: Yeah. You know, that’s interesting to me because I can look at a guy and he can have a hat on, and to most people he would look just like a cowboy. And I’ve done this, I’ve said you know, “There’s a drugstore cowboy right there.” And they always prove me correctly. But if I see a guy that I think is a cowboy and I go talk to him for a minute, and especially if I shake hands with him because I’ll tell you what, there ain’t no sissy hands when you start shaking hands with a cowboy. And it always becomes this [makes squeezing sound] who can squeeze their hand the hardest. And I don’t have the grip that I used to, but I don’t have sissy hands either, you know what I mean?
And then most of them, especially if you have your wife or your children with you, they’re very, very respectful, very quiet. If you walk in there and the guy’s got the hat on and he’s running his mouth off, you know, he can say two or three words and I can tell you whether he really knows what he’s talking about or not. I’m not nearly the cowboy that a lot of these -- I mean I have friends and I’ve been around guys in my life that they’re like the ultimate cowboy: they can ranch rope, they can ride broncs, they can do all this stuff. And I look up to them guys. And I’ll admit, I’m not all that. But I’ve concentrated on training and shoeing my whole life.
JG: You rode bareback.
IG: Yeah, I rode bareback horses for quite a few years. I don’t know why, but [laughs]. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 21
RW: Well in your life working with other ranch families, with your family –
IG: Um-hmm, um-hmm.
RW: And then shoeing – what kind of experience has it been to watch other people with horses? You’re shoeing a horse for somebody, so they’re paying you, but yet probably I would assume some of the time you’re running into people who maybe aren’t as respectful to their horse or careful with their horse.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: How was that?
IG: Or unknowledgeable – that’s the biggest thing you run into is lack of knowledge. And I don’t say anything unless somebody asks. I never try to be offensive, but I will offer advice. The thing is I can pretty much tell you how a horse is to ride if I pick their feet up and start shoeing them.
RW: Explain that, I don’t know what that means.
IG: Because if they’re pushing against me or walking away from me, that tells me that horse is basically the same way to ride. You know, so if they’re pushing on me and trying to take their feet away, they’re just kind of like, “Nyeh, I don’t want to do this.” Well if you get on them they’re going to be the same way.
RW: Okay.
IG: You see what I mean?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: But you get them ones that will just stand there and pick that foot up and hold it, and they’re very respectful – they’re that way to ride.
RW: Is that because of the nature of an animal or because of training of the animal?
IG: Training and genetics. I mean in the livestock industry, whether it’s cattle or horses, genetics is just such a huge part of the whole thing. That’s why genetically they’ve gone to the Angus cattle because of the birthrate: the heads are smaller, the birthrate is less, and then they develop quicker. So it’s all genetics; and horses are the same way, and people are the same way. It’s all genetics as far as I’m concerned.
RW: So there’s a big knowledge, a skill set every occupation [has] whether a nurse, or a folklorist, a rancher, a cowboy, farrier – there’s huge skill sets. And within those skill sets I’ve always noticed that some people have a higher efficiency than others.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 22
IG: That’s just the way people are in general.
RW: Right.
IG: That’s the way horses are, you know.
RW: But I’m just [wondering] listening to you [about this]; before we were talking about all the nuances: the respect and the knowledge to understand a horse.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: But then beyond the horse, then what you’re bringing to it is also your knowledge about that breed.
IG: Um-hmm, exactly.
RW: It has always been fascinating to me, for such a respectful, quiet group – not a real lot of bragging going on, for the most part, around people from outside. I always think, “These are people that should be bragging all the time! They know so much.”
IG: They tell stories.
JG: Yes.
RW: Talk about that to me.
IG: That’s what poetry is.
RW: Okay.
IG: Cowboys tell stories. Somebody will say – some subject will come up and somebody will say, “Oh yeah, I remember when I worked on such and such’s ranch.” Or, “I was working and this happened to me.” So you start relating these stories because that same thing has probably happened to everybody there.
And what poetry is, is those stories put to rhyme; period. So cowboys brag, but they do it by telling a story. Like, “Oh yeah, you got bucked – well let me tell you this story about, you know, the horse that I rode!” So you’re telling a story, but you’re bragging [laughs]! So there you go.
RW: Awesome. You’re teaching too, don’t you think, with those stories?
IG: Oh, sure you are. Oh yeah.
JG: And traditions.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 23
IG: Yeah.
JG: They kind of pass on a tradition and that. Like I’ve asked him about different poems that will mention something, and I’ll say, “So what is that?” And it’s some nuance or some tradition that a cowboy has, that nobody else understands.
IG: You know it’s like “Don’t put your hat on the bed.”
JG: Yeah, that was my [??]
IG: That’s a superstitious thing. You know, cowboys never put their hat on the bed. I can’t think of really that many now, but there’s traditionally the way things are done. Take for example, when I grew up we never put anything – the mother cows would go in a chute, and they’d get wormed and vaccinated, and check their teeth or whatever. But the calves were always headed and heeled and drug to the fire. That’s a tradition.
See, and that’s changed in the ranching industry now because it’s so huge. Now they run them in a chute and do everything – all the calves are run through a chute. Well our philosophy always was, “The less stress you can put on a calf, the better they do.” So if you separate all these calves over here for that period of time, and work them and stress them out, they don’t do as good as if you just ride in there, throw a loop on them, drag them to the fire, do your thing, let them run right back to their mom; a lot less stress.
And these big outfits that do everything in a corral and a chute, they’ve got to go out and round up all them cows and bring them into one area. We’d just go to an area and when we had enough there, we’d build a fire, rope them, brand them, do whatever we needed to do, and then we’d go to the next one. See what I mean?
RW: Right.
IG: So that part of the ranching industry has changed big time, that traditional part of it. I know my cousin wherever he was, he always tried to stay with that tradition. I think that’s maybe one thing that’s really died in the modern day ranches is, they chase them with four wheelers now, they get them so wild you can’t even catch them. They’re trying to round them up on four wheelers. Being on horseback and doing things the old way I think is tradition that’s been lost.
[END Tape 1 of 2: B]
[BEGIN Tape 2 of 2: A]
JG: I’d have to ask him “What do you mean by that? Why do you have to be respectful to the cook?” You know. We all sit and talk about, “you need to be respectful to that cook.” I always thought it was just because they were cooking your dinner, but there’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to that chuck wagon and what goes on around it and what doesn’t, is what the big thing is: what doesn’t.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 24
IG: You know, and that comes down to a respect thing again. Be respectful. To me that’s so much a part of life.
JG: Right.
IG: Be respectful.
RW: Well I remember one of my first [Cowboy Poetry] Gatherings, because of my professional training to kind of pay attention to cultural nuances (and laughter is one of them); I remember at one of the first Gatherings I was in the audience and someone was reciting a poem (it was somewhat humorous), and there was parts that I could understand were funny; and then there would be parts that I didn’t understand why everyone was laughing.
IG: [Laughing]
RW: Because I was outside culturally –
IG: Yeah.
RW: --I didn’t have the information to know why someone was doing a numb skull thing.
IG: Um-hmm.
JG: What’s so funny?
RW: Yeah.
JG: What is that?
RW: Right.
IG: See, I went to the very first poetry gathering that was ever in Elko, Nevada.
RW: Did you?
IG: Before it was even recognized, because I was out with my cousin. I don’t know if you want to record this or not.
RW: I’ve got it on, we’re going.
IG: Anyway, so we were out to the ranch and it was you know, later in the fall and we were getting ready to wean calves. So he’s like, “Do you want to go into town tonight? They’re having this little get together at the Stockmen’s and guys are going to tell stories, you know, and play the guitar and do stuff like that.” And I’m like, “Well yeah, let’s go see that.” So we go into Elko, we go into Stockmen’s and we go upstairs and there’s just a Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 25
bunch of cowboys sitting around singing and talking and telling poems. And that’s where the very first poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada started, was right there at the Stockmen’s. And from there it’s just – I mean we went this year and I’m just like, “Whoa, this has sure changed.” You know.
JG: I think we were overwhelmed.
IG: But like I say, that’s where it’s all originated from. I’ve written a lot of poetry and I’m not a poet, by any means. But when I did write a poem it was about an experience; you either try to make it funny or glamorous or heart-warming or whatever and try to make the words rhyme. So yeah, it’s just stories; bragging stories.
RW: I love what you said about that cowboys do brag; they do it through stories.
IG: Well of course they do! They tell stories, yeah, sure they do. Men have to brag! [Laughs] You know, that’s just the way we are; that’s our ego! We can always rope better than this guy, or ride a bucking horse better than he can, or you know whatever. That’s just the way men are.
RW: Joanne mentioned that you did some rodeoing.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: When did you do that?
IG: Well I started when I was about 18, riding bareback horses, and I rode until I was about 26.
RW: Did you ride around the circuit?
IG: Uh-huh, yeah; semi-pro rodeo cowboy’s deal, you know.
RW: Uh-huh.
IG: My dad was a charter member of the PRCA and he was a saddle bronc rider. And he broke his back (in Tremonton, actually) when he was a young man. You know, back in them days they didn’t have the bucking chutes like we have now; they just had this home made deal and they’d run them in, and run a pole behind them. When the horse turned to come out, in the early days of rodeo, they would all throw their hats in the air and holler. Well when they did, this horse went to come out and when he jumped he come up on his hind feet and come right over, and that pole hit my dad right in the back and broke his back.
RW: Oh!
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 26
IG: Well I always wanted to be a saddle bronc rider because my dad was a saddle bronc rider, but I never could afford the saddle. So I started getting on bareback horses. And it’s a tough sport. And back in them days we didn’t wear protective vests, and we didn’t wear these big neck braces. These guys now, they got their arms all wrapped up. It’s changed a lot. I was never really good at it, but I just did it because it made me feel good, it made me feel like I was tough and a man.
RW: I’ve always wondered about rodeo because it really is a concentration of showing expert behavior.
IG: Uh-huh.
RW: I mean it’s simple, small amounts of ranch life compressed. Can you talk a little bit about your feelings about the rodeo?
IG: Well, yeah. You know, every event in rodeo originated on a ranch. In the early days just about every cowboy that rode whatever come from a ranch background, and that’s not the case anymore. That’s changed, just like everything else in our life. Now you’ve got these guys coming from – the ranch cowboy and the rodeo cowboy are two different people, as far as I’m concerned. The way they dress, the way they think, the way they look, the way they – everything.
You can tell a rodeo cowboy from a ranch cowboy. They’re all called cowboys, but they’re two different deals. So now you have the guy that can come from New York City and be a bronc rider, and probably never ridden a horse prior to that time, or has no idea what it’s even like to live on a ranch. You know, they’re doing it because they have a talent and they want to make money. So it’s really changed from the way it used to be.
RW: Let’s talk about the way it used to be.
IG: Well it used to be every cowboy that I ever rodeoed with grew up on a ranch. And we’d all ridden bucking horses, just in a little bit type of different deal. And there wasn’t all this money and all this fame, and all this kind of stuff in it, like there is now. I mean especially now, I mean for years and years you’d starve to death if you tried to be a rodeo cowboy, you know. We just did it because it made us feel tough [laughs].
RW: But in a way of also showing your skills.
IG: Yeah, oh yeah. You have to have a skill, yeah.
RW: People that have similar –
IG: But you know what? Believe me, the majority of guys that ever tried to rodeo do it because it makes them feel tough. And a lot of them find out that they’re not quite as tough as they thought they were; not that they’re not tough, but they’re just not made out to do that particular thing. Now it’s so scientific you know, the whole art of riding a Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 27
bucking horse or a bareback horse, you can go to a school and they got all this stuff figured out, and all this technique, and all this new stuff. You know, it’s just changed so much since I was --. And the horses buck harder now than they used to. But it’s just like the ranching business: it’s just changed so much.
But the rodeo cowboy, like I say, is a completely (for the majority) different person than the ranch cowboy was; the lifestyle. It’s just completely different because ranching – ranch cowboys are a dying breed; there’s not many left.
RW: Um-hmm. Have you ever been involved in shoeing rodeo stock?
IG: You don’t shoe rodeo stock.
RW: Why not?
IG: Because there’s no need to put shoes on them. Most of them would kick your head off if you tried.
JG: [??]
IG: Yeah, I mean I’ve shod every – I mean I’ve shod mules for the United States Marine Corps, I’ve done every kind of breed that you can imagine over the years.
JG: Barrel horses you’ve shod.
IG: Barrel horses, yeah. But them rodeo horses they never because the foot is like your fingernail: it will grow out so far, and if you catch it on something it will break off.
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: Horses hooves the same way: they’ll grow out so far and then break off. But most rodeo horses, most rodeo horses are horses that for some reason cannot be broke, or like to buck, or they’re bred to buck, or whatever. Well they don’t start handling their legs when they’re babies, like we do for our saddle horses, see.
RW: Right.
IG: So you reach down there to touch that leg and you’re in big trouble. You touch most of them rodeo horses anywhere and they’re going to nail you. So to me they’re even wilder than a wild horse.
RW: Well were kind of coming down to the end here. Is there some things that I’m not thinking to ask you, that you’ve been thinking about to share?
JG: What did your mother do while your dad was doing all this stuff? I was always –
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 28
IG: She baked bread, you know. We had a wood cook stove and she’d bake bread and – I don’t know what she did.
JG: I always thought that she rode along and did this stuff.
IG: Oh no, no. None of the – my aunts on either side of my family – I never, ever seen them on a horse; this is man’s work. You have babies and cook, and we’ll ride the horses.
RW: Did your mom have a garden?
IG: No, no. I don’t know what she did. She liked to read; she read a lot.
JG: Played piano.
IG: Just ending up this whole thing, I got to tell you this little story about when I was a young boy. My dad come out one morning and he said (and I think this kind of is the – I don’t know, maybe all cowboys or all ranch people don’t think this way, but this has always kind of stuck in my mind), “I want you to go out there this morning and get on that tractor, and hook it up to that digger and go do this.” You know, I’m like 12 and I just looked at him and I says, “I’m a cowboy, I’m no farmer.” And he looked at me and he says, “You’re anything I tell you you’re going to be today.” [All laughing] And I left out a few words, but basically that’s what it was.
RW: Right. [All laughing]
You’re clay in his hands.
IG: Yeah, um-hmm.
RW: Joanne our visit has been so enjoyable; thank you so much. Would you mind if we take a gander at your –
IG: Shoeing?
RW: Well yeah.
IG: Sure, sure!
RW: And I can take some pictures?
IG: Sure, yeah.
RW: Well let me turn this off.
[End recording.]

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 1
RANCH FAMILY ORAL HISTORY
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee: Irv and Joanne Glenn
Place of Interview: Glenn Home, Farr West, Utah
Date of Interview: March 5, 2010
Interviewer/Recordist: Randy Williams
Recording Equipment: Radio Shack Cassette Recorder: CTR-122, with Radio Shack Omni-directional microphone: ATR35s
Transcription Equipment: Power Player Transcription Software: Executive Communication Systems with foot pedal
Transcribed by: Susan Gross
Transcript Proofed by: Randy Williams (20 May 2010); Irv Glenn approved by phone
Brief Description of Contents: Mr. Glenn talks about his childhood and experiences growing up on a ranch in northern Utah and southern Idaho. He talks about his career as a farrier and horse trainer as an adult.
Reference: RW = Randy Williams (Interviewer)
IG = Irv Glenn
JG = Joanne Glenn
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “you know” and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Tape 1 of 2: A]
RW: Well I am at Irv and Joanne Glenn’s home in Farr West. It is beautiful March day; March 5, 2010.
Irv, do you want to give me your full name, where you were born and your birth date?
IG: It’s Irvin E. Glenn. I was born in Preston, Idaho on July 12, 1949.
RW: Was your family from the Preston, Idaho area?
IG: My mother was born and raised in Preston. My father, Adam, was born in Wellsville, Utah. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 2
RW: What was your mother’s name?
IG: Pearl.
RW: Pearl.
IG: Pearl Esplin.
RW: Pearl Esper?
IG: Esplin.
RW: Esplin, okay.
IG: Yeah, um-hmm.
RW: Now, let’s talk a little bit about your dad for a minute. So he’s from Wellsville – was he involved in a ranch environment in Wellsville?
IG: My grandfather, John B. Glenn, homesteaded the Blue Creek Valley, which is approximately, from Tremonton, probably west about six or eight miles, and then north about another ten miles. My grandpa John and my grandma, Elizabeth, were married in Wellsville and went to the ranch in a horse and buggy.
RW: What kind of homestead was it?
IG: It was a dry farm cattle operation.
RW: What time period were they married: your grandparents?
IG: Well my grandma was born in 1889, and they had to be married in the middle 1900s. I’m not really that sure.
RW: But they were pretty early [residents] in Wellsville?
IG: Oh yeah. My grandma remembers when she was a younger girl, when they were still carrying firearms in Wellsville, yeah.
RW: How did your dad get up to Preston?
IG: He was introduced to my mother through a friend, and that’s where he met my mother because that’s where she was from, in Preston.
RW: And they settled up there?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 3
IG: Yeah. We were there until I was about – I was probably five or six years old in Preston. And then my dad and my uncle went in partners and bought the ranch which is located 40 miles northwest of Soda Springs, Idaho, right on the Blackfoot River, right next to the borders of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. And that’s where I grew up.
RW: So your father and his brother –
IG: His brother-in-law.
RW: Brother-in-law, okay. So your dad is on a homestead there in Wellsville with his parents (or out in that Blue Creek area)?
IG: Um-hmm, yeah. What they did – and this is basically the way we spent my whole entire life – they had a summer home, or a winter home and a ranch that was work during the summer. Because in the winter times it is impossible to do anything, there’s just too much snow. So the cattle were always moved to a location where they were fed during the winter.
RW: Where would that winter ranch?
IG: Well the winter place for my grandpa was over by Tremonton. And my dad’s was – they had a feed lot in Soda Springs, and then later on they trucked a lot of them down to Preston and put them on a place called the Sandhill, where the snow didn’t pile up real deep. And that’s where they’d feed them. And we never had a large herd of cows: we had 300, but we had 3,000 acres of dry farm. We raised a lot of wheat, so it was a combination of farming and ranching both. But I tried to stay away from the farming and concentrate on the ranching [laughs].
RW: How many children were in your family?
IG: Just me.
RW: Just one?
IG: Um-hmm. Yeah, I was raised – my dad had this thing about an only child, and he raised me – I felt like a hired hand my whole life. He was very strict, maybe to the point where a lot of people thought he was mean. But he’d been a cowboy his whole life and he wasn’t going to have a son that was a spoiled only child. I had a lot of responsibility from the time I was very young.
I remember one time in Wellsville, going to my grandpa’s place. They used to, when they’d bring the hay wagon in with the loose hay in it – this was with a team of horses, and they’d bring the team up under the buck rake from the barn. And I’d be riding the work horse, and I’d back the work horse up and drop the buck rake into the hay and then ride it forward, and they’d bring it up and then pull it into the barn because that’s where they put all the hay was in the top there for the cows. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 4
RW: How old would you have been when you started doing that?
IG: Oh, seven. When I was between nine and ten I was taking a saddle horse and a pack horse out on the Indian Reservation line and fixing fence, because they would cut the fence and run their cows in on our grain. So my dad would send me out early in the morning with a pack horse and a saddle horse, and I would go up and fix whatever fence was broke; be gone all day and then come back to the ranch house. We had no power, no running water. If you wanted water, you went out – we had the old hand pump. And I remember you had to pump that 12 times to get the water before it would come up into the bucket.
RW: Priming the pump.
IG: Prime the pump. And I’ve always been scared of the dark and he’d make me go out there at night and get a bucket of water. I don’t know why I’ve been afraid of the dark, I just have. But boy, I mean I would hurry out there and I’d pump that thing as hard as I could, and fill that bucket up and grab it, and run back into the house.
RW: So when you’re talking about going out and checking the fence, and fixing the fences – is this out on your place out in [Idaho?]
IG: This was out on the Blackfoot, yeah.
RW: Is that what you consider your home ranch, out there?
IG: Uh-huh, yeah. That was the home ranch.
RW: Well one of the things I’ve asked people, Irv, is to kind of give me a year in the life [of a rancher]. And with you it would be interesting to start the perspective of the year in the life of a rancher from a child.
IG: Uh-huh.
RW: But then move forward.
IG: Okay.
RW: Because you’re getting different tasks as you age it sounds like.
IG: Sure, yeah you do.
RW: So when you’re real young, what would an only child of a rancher – what would you be doing?
IG: Well, the only thing I can remember doing when I was really, really young was my dad – he shod our horses, and I always got the job of standing there by their head and holding them while he would put shoes on them. And I hated it [laughs] because if they moved he Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 5
would cuss me or whatever. And he wasn’t trying to be mean, he just working hard and flies and sweat and all that kind of stuff. So, that was kind of one of my jobs early on. And keeping things picked up and cleaned up. My dad was a fanatic about keeping things clean and nice.
And I had my horse from the time I’ve been really old enough to remember. Like I say, maybe seven, eight, nine years old I always had this one horse that I pretty much rode until I got up maybe nine or ten, then I would just ride whatever he told me to ride.
RW: How come your dad, when he’s shoeing a horse and you’re holding its head and keeping it calm – what kind of skills did you acquire? What did you do to make sure they were still and quiet?
IG: Well I tried to make sure that I kept the flies off of them, and I’d pet them on the nose, and talk to them, and just kind of keep their attention. And I think probably what I developed was a big love for horses. I mean they’ve just always been such a part of my life. They’re just such a magnificent animal. You know, I learned things as I was growing up younger, that have carried on into my – because I’ve trained horses and shoed horses my whole life now, see. So that was something that I never, ever forgot.
RW: Since you mentioned that you were a farrier – are those some skills that you mainly learned from your father?
IG: Oh yeah. See, my father passed away when I was 17, from cancer. And I had the option at that time of either staying there with my mom and buying out – continuing on my dad’s share – or letting my uncle buy us out. Well, at 17 years old, and that’s all you’ve done all your life – I wanted to go to the city. I wanted to see what life was.
So my mom had graduated from BYU, and she had a teaching degree. So we came to Ogden, and she went to work as a teacher. And I was kind of lost because I didn’t know what to do; I’d never worked for anybody. So I just started breaking a few horses and doing stuff like that. Well I would hire these people to come out and shoe my horses, and it was just like, “This is horrible. What are you doing?” And eventually that’s what I went to school – I started kind of doing it myself, and there was just too many blind areas there. So I went to school in Oklahoma City and got a degree, and then continued on from there.
RW: What are “blind areas”? What does that mean?
IG: Well like, how much hoof can you trim off without making them bleed and how to use the tools.
RW: Um-hmm. So you had some skills watching your father.
IG: Yeah, I knew how he trimmed the hoof, and rasped it down, and put the shoe and nailed it on. But, which direction did you turn the horseshoe nails? Or, where do you hit the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 6
shoe to make it do this? Or, how far can you trim that foot? Or, which way do you trim the foot to make a horse’s feet straight? Or, how close do you fit them so they don’t pull the shoe? Just a lot of questions like that. I’d watched it a million times, but I just had so many questions, and I didn’t want to do it unless I knew what I was doing.
RW: So, I want to get back to your childhood a little bit, but I’d like to follow up – Oklahoma City? So is there a farrier school?
IG: Yes, Oklahoma School of Horse Shoeing, yeah.
RW: How long were you there?
IG: Six weeks. And it was tough [laughs].
RW: What was tough about it?
IG: Well horse shoeing in itself is probably one of the toughest things that any man will ever do, because you’re in –
RW: Physical tough, or mental tough?
IG: Physical tough, not mental, no. You don’t have to be a genius to be a horse shoer, but physically you have to be pretty strong because you’re lifting up part of that animal, your knees are bent, your back – you’re bent over like this and your head’s up here. So physically it’s very demanding, especially if you get a horse that will start moving around. So that’s the part of it, that’s the hardest is becoming conditioned.
So when I went to school there I mean I thought I was pretty tough, and I probably was. But we were in a dormitory – it was kind of like the military – we were in a dormitory upstairs in this metal building, and down below there was 12 gas powered forges. So in the morning at six o’clock we would go in for classroom instruction. They’d load us on a bus and they’d take us out to a ranch, and we would be hands-on shoeing horses. One day you’d do the front – you always had a partner – one day you’d do the front feet, the next day you’d do the back feet.
But then when we’d get back to school at night, then they would assign us a shoe to make. So we’d go downstairs, and here’d be these 12 gas forges all burning. All that heat going right up through [to] where we slept. And it was in June and the humidity was like 100%. So you’d have to finish that shoe and have it all done, ready to display in the classroom the next morning. So when you’d go upstairs to go to bed, it was horrible. So a combination of the humidity and the heat and then the actual work itself – by the time you got back at night, I mean your legs were just shaking. But it didn’t take me very long to get in shape.
RW: How old were you when you went to this school?
IG: I was probably 20 something, right in there, 20, 21 – something like that. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 7
RW: What were the other students – what were their backgrounds?
IG: From all walks of life. I remember this one guy that was there that was a baker from Oregon. And he didn’t make it – he lasted about two weeks and couldn’t handle it physically anymore. There was a guy from Australia that worked on a ranch in Australia; and he was probably the toughest man I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a guy there from Hawaii that worked on – I forget the name now – but he worked on the biggest cattle ranch in Hawaii. And they had sent him there to learn how to shoe the ranch horses.
So it was just kind of a mix of people and they would come and go. Every two weeks they would start a new class. After two weeks, they would kind of move you up; you were far enough ahead that you would work with somebody new that was just coming in. So you got to kind of help them, and explain to them, and teach them what you’d already learned. And then just continue on until everything kind of became automatic.
And I thought, when I come back from Oklahoma I thought, “Man, I’m a horse shoer. I’m tough and I’m a horse shoer.” And I remember coming home and the first horse that I shoed was for some people over here in Plain City – it took me like three hours because I had never had to shoe one all the way around. And I was just totally exhausted. And I thought, “What the heck am I doing?” But I loved it; I loved the freedom.
Because I come from a background of freedom, I mean you know, we had responsibilities but we never looked at our watch and seen what time it was. We had a certain amount of things to do from the time we got up in the morning, which was daylight. Before daylight we were usually up, had horses saddled, had a cup of coffee, be gone all day, come home, eat one meal, and go to bed and do it again. But there was not this huge – like I say, we didn’t look at our watch every five minutes. We’d look up and say, “Oh, we got so many hours of daylight left.” Whether I was sitting on a horse, or I was sitting on a crawler – because in them days they never had any rubber tired tractors, they were all these big crawlers that we pulled everything with.
RW: What did you use the crawlers for?
IG: Because we had dry farm; we raised wheat. So in the fall, after they cut the wheat, you’d go in there with a set of diggers – two full sets, they were like 30 feet with two rod weeders on behind. And the diggers would dig the ground up, and then the rod weeders would roll backwards and they’d flip the roots of the plants up on top, you see?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: And then in the spring, of course you were planting grain. And you rotated, one year you’d grow it here and then the next year you’d grow it here. And you’d rotate your crops around. There was no irrigation like there is now. Everything we relied on was Mother Nature.
RW: So this was you and your dad and your uncle?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 8
IG: And my cousin Steve, my cousin Ron, and my cousin Mike.
RW: And this is your mom’s brother and his kids?
IG: This is my dad’s sister’s family.
RW: Okay. You said it was your dad’s brother-in-law, so it’s your dad’s sister’s family?
IG: Right, um-hmm.
RW: What were their names? What was your uncle’s name?
IG: John Sharp. You’re from Cache Valley – you’ve seen the Sharp Trucking?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: That’s my cousin Ivan or Zan.
RW: Okay.
IG: Which I probably haven’t seen since he was about this tall. But my cousin, Steve, him and I were about eight months apart and these guys were all like brothers to me, really. You know, you ask me if I had a family, but they were all like brothers to me. But Steve and I were close to the same age, so we did everything together. I mean all the time we were growing up. I mean we might not be together every day, all day – he might be off doing something else, you know. But we pretty much grew up together.
And he went on to be a ranch manager. He worked on the Spanish Ranch and the Wine Cup. He managed the 7H over in Ruby Valley. Carlin, Nevada – he’d managed a big ranch over there that here a few years ago was one of the last known places in the United States to get electrical power. And then he went from there to Eureka and ran the Saddler Brown, which was the original Governor’s ranch of the state of California that’s owned by the Lufkin family from Cache Valley that invented the Hesston Bale wagon. And he was a diabetic and had a seizure, went into a coma here about ten years ago, and died right there on the ranch. But that was his whole life.
RW: Wow. One thing I’ve noticed with these interviews is, especially when I’m reading the transcripts, everybody is somehow connected to somebody else: either family-wise, ranch-wise, working-wise. There’s some shoestring relation between everybody.
IG: Hmm.
RW: You know a lot of the ranches you’re talking about [that] your cousin managed – I’ve either interviewed someone that also worked on that ranch; it’s just like there are layers, this lifestyle.
IG: Yeah, and I think the thing is, you know to work your way from being just a cowboy on a horse everyday, to a ranch manager – it takes these steps and these years of experience. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 9
And a lot of guys start out, but they never finish because the pay is not good by any means. The hours are long and it’s dirty and it’s hard work. The life of a cowboy is not this glamorous, as much as people might think; it’s hard work. You know, he stuck with it because he loved what he was doing. Like I’ve always loved what I’ve been doing.
The doctors have told me I should have quit doing what I’m doing a long time ago, but I can’t because I feel like at my age in life I’m entitled to do what I want to do until the day I die. So I’ll continue to shoe and ride horses [laughing] until I can’t get up off that couch!
RW: Right. You know, I’ve heard a lot of farriers talk about the toll it takes, the physical toll on your body.
IG: Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s such an art; it’s something that’s never changed. The only thing that’s really changed as far as farrier work, or horse shoeing, was years ago blacksmith made parts for everything. He re-lined wheels, and he made parts for the wagons, and he shod horses too. But you know, what he used to heat his steel with was like a coke forger, whatever. And so now, you know, they call a lot of shoers blacksmiths, but they’re not technically blacksmiths because they don’t do blacksmith work. But you know, now days the tools are all the same. I mean I can make a pair of handmade shoes, but I use a propane forge, instead of a coke forge; see what I mean?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: So that’s really – the hand tools and everything are just identical to what they have been for you know, hundreds of years.
RW: Well I kind of interrupted you. You were talking about being at the farrier school and coming home and starting out your career.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: What was it like being a ranch boy, growing up and then coming to Ogden?
IG: Oh it was a shock. It was a culture shock because I dressed different than everybody else, and people would stare at me.
RW: What was your clothing like?
IG: Just like this.
RW: So you’ve got some blue jeans.
IG: Yeah, blue jeans.
RW: Boots, nice collared shirt.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 10
IG: Yeah, and a buttoned shirt to the top.
RW: Long sleeves.
IG: Yeah, and my hair was always cut really short, you know. And people would stare at me. And I really took offense to it for a while, and then I realized that it was more curiosity than anything. And that really hasn’t changed – people still stare.
RW: Joanne, you mentioned coming into this lifestyle after meeting and knowing Glenn and being married. But it sounds like you’ve had horses before that time. What is your impression, from somebody outside looking in, when you’re hearing these stories? What goes through your mind?
This is Glenn’s wife Joanne.
JG: It’s really hard to be with someone who everybody stares at all the time. We dated a lot in Salt Lake. He always wears a hat and people stare at us; used to stare at us a lot. Irv has his picture taken all the time because I think there’s something about a relic of the past, or something like that.
He was a lot more quiet than most of the other guys I dated. There’s a certain amount of real independence there, and he talked a little bit about that. It’s hard; it really is hard to fit into his life. We thought so differently – talk about a different perspective: it’s a totally different perspective.
And I think before our first date I went to a store and I was buying a few things and he was waiting for me outside (it was in a mall). He waited outside because he didn’t feel very comfortable in the store I was in. And the young girl waiting on me said – I just happened to mention, “I’m going out with this different guy, I really need to buy something that would be really cool for him.” And she said, “Well who is he?” And I said, “Well he’s a cowboy.” And all the girls in that store went out to look at Irv through the window.
And I think that people have this idea, this romantic, wonderful idea – and I don’t want to shatter their illusions, and it’s not that it’s not that great because it was very romantic, and there was a lot to it. But it’s not what they think; it’s tough. They’re tough and they have their own independence; they don’t necessarily need you as much as someone else might need you – at least they don’t show that.
RW: Irv is shaking his head, “yes.” [Laughs]
JG: Uh-huh. And that’s one of the things that gets misinterpreted by families, by other people in their life: that they don’t need anyone that they don’t love like everybody else does, or have that passion about them. They do; it’s just that they have learned, like his father taught him, “Look, you’re a man, you don’t show this. I don’t care what you do, that never comes through.” And he picked up on that whole thing. I think a lot of his family Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 11
got alienated by the fact that he has that ethic and that thing underneath. And that still water runs very deep. And so now I understand a lot of the things that, you know, I’d read about, or I’d thought about – he broke a lot of those myths for me about things that people think. And it can be very romantic, but you have to understand where this all came from.
I had a real hard time. I would ask him questions, and when something doesn’t fit with me (I’m a psych nurse), I just keep asking questions until I get that answered. And it takes a long time to figure that out; it takes this huge long time, you know. I would agonize over a question for days or weeks, and you know, he would tell me the answer and it just didn’t work for me. You know, I kept trying to adjust this to what we feel is normal in society. They are not the same, and I know that because I look at his friends too and they are just like him. They’ve been alienating their family, or you know, certain family members can’t understand.
And I was reading some of the things before that you sent to us – it’s almost like post traumatic stress syndrome, where some of those things that were so traumatic in their life, they have a hard time with. You know, if you take them back there, they have to work some thing to kind of figure out exactly what happened, or how that happened, or why it did. So I could read what you were sending us in a different way than probably Irv would. So the perspective is totally different.
RW: And you’re referring to the letter that I sent: I kind of explained our project a little bit.
JG: Exactly.
RW: I see. Thank you; that is a really interesting perspective.
Well I’m just wondering, Irv, in regards to that streak of independence and what Joanne said –
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: Someone once told me that occupations that are so inclusive, you know, ranching being one of them – there’s an element of danger at all times.
IG: Um-hmm, yes; at all times.
RW: And you really, from what people have told me in these interviews, and also my observation – you’ve got to trust the people you work with.
IG: You bet.
RW: Can you talk a little bit about that? There’s that fierce independence, but yet you really rely on other people, or an animal.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 12
IG: Well I think one of the biggest things with the true cowboys that I’ve known all my life – they have this deep, burning respect. Not only for each other, but for animals. And a deep love for animals. But if you can’t take a man by his word, then he’s not a man as far as I’m concerned. Because everything that you did in business when I was growing up was done with a handshake; nothing was ever put on paper. And you’re also taught a deep respect for your father, your grandfather – anybody that’s older than you are – you have a deep respect for those people.
So I think this respect thing – and that’s what’s hard about, you know, being out in life because with me, I trust and respect everybody until they prove to me that I can’t. And if you don’t have that respect for the men that you work with when you’re in ranching (because there’s a lot of times that your safety depends on exactly what they’re doing), so they have to be men of their word, and you have to respect them. You know, and me being younger than all the ranch hands, I had this huge amount of respect for everybody that ever come around there. And some of them proved themselves wrong, which was a life lesson, you know. I looked up to them and respected them, and they would do something my dad would say wasn’t right. It was kind of a learning thing that carries clear through your life.
But as far as the family thing goes, you know, there’s just certain things in my life whether it’s my family or my friends that I just won’t tolerate. I won’t tolerate disrespect, whether it’s from my own kids or friends or whatever. Whether its disrespect for my wife, or to me directly or whatever, I just will not tolerate that. So I just shut it off.
As far as the emotional part of things, you know, there’s not very many days go by when you grew up on a ranch that you don’t get a bump or a bruise. Well you’re not going to just go running crying to your mom, or running to your dad and say, “I got this owie, owie,” because you better buck up and be tough. So you learn to be very independent, very tough. But you don’t show emotions because you’ve heard the term, “big boys don’t cry.” Well that’s instilled in you. If you get bucked off, unless you broke something you get back on and you go down the trail with the rest of them, regardless. And I’ve had to choke back the tears a few times, you know, because I’ve been hurt.
[END Tape 1 of 2: A]
[BEGIN Tape 1 of 2: B]
IG: -- only person in my life that’s ever been able to actually bring out the emotion, you know. And it’s not that I don’t love and I don’t feel – I just don’t show it. I’m not a hold hands, touchy-feely kind – because that’s the way we were raised. We didn’t hug and that; I mean, you knew your dad loved you and you knew your mom loved you, but there wasn’t any hugging and stuff like that going on. And so naturally as I get older I’m the same way.
RW: Well I remember once talking to a good friend and her husband had a lot of brothers, and they were living away from the family at the time. And she said, “My husband gets on the phone all the time with his brothers and they talk about football, or this or that and the Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 13
other.” And we both said, “I bet that’s a way of saying ‘I love you’, but it’s not coming right out and saying ‘I love you.’”
IG: Yeah, right; exactly.
RW: So what I’m hearing you say is there is a lot of ways to show love.
IG: Oh, of course, yeah.
RW: And some of them are, like you said, more actions – showing respect. With your mother when you were injured: bumps and bruises – she must have had to kind of be on the same page with your dad?
IG: Well, she tried to coddle and stuff like that, and he wouldn’t tolerate that. I mean you know of course, I assumed that I was just devastated hurt. You know how moms are – they want to feel the same way. Well my dad wasn’t trying to be mean, he knows what a bump, a bruise, or a break is, but he wanted me to be tough because I was an only child and he didn’t want anybody to think that his son was a wimp. So he would not tolerate that. So the next day I was up, right out there with everybody else doing my job.
RW: Well back on your home ranch, there’s your family: your mom and dad, and your aunt, and uncle and cousins.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: But then you mentioned hired hands. Who would come in and what would they be doing?
IG: They were hired to be cowboys. Guys were always kind of drifting in and out of there. We’d have sometimes three, maybe four, just depending. But you know, they had to do a little farm work and they had to do a little fencing. You know a lot of cowboys just want to sit on a horse all day, and that’s great, but that’s just not the way life works.
RW: Well let’s talk about the cycle of ranch family. Because you’re not always on a horse; what are you doing?
IG: Well we had 3,000 acres of farm land, so a lot of times we were working the ground, or we were fixing fence, or repairing machinery – a lot of repairing machinery – fixing things up, or putting a new roof on the implement shed. You know, just a lot of things; there’s always something to do.
RW: What kind of haying – what kind of equipment did you use, what style?
IG: Well we didn’t put up any hay.
RW: Okay.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 14
IG: No, because all the cattle went to a feed yard during the winter.
RW: Okay.
IG: And so the hay was bought locally and fed. So that was one thing I’m glad we didn’t do, was hay.
JG: But tell her about your uncle that wasn’t really your uncle.
IG: Yeah, but he was –
JG: Where did he come from?
IG: Well I don’t know where he come from, but that was for my grandpa – that was a whole different – my Uncle Joe. He wasn’t related, but we called him Uncle Joe. But you know, that goes back to the days when they settled the ranch in Blue Creek and everything was done with teams of horses. This guy we called Uncle Joe evidently wandered on there and my grandpa hired him. But he had a deformity: his knee caps were on the back of his [legs] instead of here [pointing to legs] and so his leg from here went this way, and he had to scoot. But he was the fastest grain sack tier in the Blue Creek Valley. They’d have contests to see who could sack wheat because the horses would pull the combine you know, the grain would go through the thrasher and it would come out and come right in, they’d have to bag it. So that’s kind of getting off on a different deal.
RW: But that’s the lifestyle your dad grew up with?
IG: Oh yeah. My dad was – now I’ve been told he was five, six – I don’t know for sure, that seems awful young – he was coming up the lane on a horse, and he decided he was going to run and he took off, and the saddle slipped underneath the horse and his foot caught in the stirrup and it drug him. And he was like in a coma for a long time. And he had to take medication his whole life because he had seizures. But that was just one experience that he was like very little at that time. Yeah, that happened on my Grandpa John’s ranch in Blue Creek.
JG: But you were never allowed to run a horse.
IG: Oh no, no, no. The only time you ever ran a horse when I grew up was if you were going to catch something, you know. Not saying that I didn’t when my dad wasn’t looking.
[Laughing]
RW: Well I’m wondering if you’re feeding your cows during the winter at the feed lot. When are your mother cows calving? And where is that taking place at?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 15
IG: Well they’d bring them back up on the lower range early, early in the spring. And we wouldn’t calve until like March, April, middle of April, where a lot of them are calving in February now. But we were always late.
Ranching has changed so much from the time I was a kid to now. It’s always been a business, but when I was growing up the price of beef would go up just a little bit every year. And you wasn’t getting rich, but you could always rely on it. Not like it is now: now it’s become a science. All the feed, everything has become such a science as it was compared to when I was a kid. You had 300 head of cows, and you raised so many replacement heifers and stuff like that. It was just like you always had a market, you always paid the bills and everything just kept rolling along. And it’s changed so much between then – we had horned Hereford cows; well you don’t even see them anymore, it’s all Angus now.
The whole economics of the whole ranching business has changed so much. I mean, everybody that we knew was really in the ranching business and everybody did good; nobody complained about not having money. Times were tough and you didn’t always have everything you wanted, but not like now: it’s become such a science. And the market is just like – you know. So it’s nothing like it used to be when I was a kid.
RW: Well when you moved to Ogden with your mother and went to farrier school and then struck out on your own, what kinds of folks were you shoeing horses for?
IG: I run an ad in the newspaper. Like I said, I started out training so I put an ad in the paper, and just told people that I was training horses because I really didn’t know how to do anything else. I’d tried working a few jobs, and I’m just not a work for another guy – I mean I lasted like a year or two at a couple of different things. I’m the kind of person, if I’m out there working my tail off and I feel like I’m doing a good job then leave me alone because I have a tendency to get a little upset if I have somebody riding me all the time. And that kind of caused me problems in my job because there’s always somebody that’s got their finger, pushing you in the back. I had kind of a bad temper. So I had a tendency to get myself in a little trouble [laughs].
So I was breaking – I had like three or four horses and I would just ride. And then like I say, I’d have these guys come and shoe.
RW: Where were you keeping your horses? When you said you had three or four horses were those three or four of your own, or three or four you were breaking at the time?
IG: Breaking, yeah. At that time I actually rented a place out in Hooper. I didn’t have any stalls or really anything like some of these facilities now. So it was kind of a rustic type deal. But I just did the only thing I really knew how to do. And that’s really kind of carried on through most of my life. You know, years ago when horse shoeing in the winter time would get slow, so I’d go drive truck for old LW Miller up there in Hyrum, or whatever I had to do. Then it eventually evolved into the point where I was so busy I had no time. I mean I was shoeing so many horses that I couldn’t even take a day off. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 16
RW: Was [your work] mostly here in the Weber county?
IG: Well for a while. I kind of semi-retired here about three years ago, but at that time I was shoeing for Tom Chambers (the basketball player), and Steve Smith (the football player down in Orem).
JG: Steve Young, right?
IG: Steve Young, yeah. And then I had a Western States Ranches in Las Vegas, Nevada. And then I was shoeing for John Blackburn, III – which is a huge wine grower from Northern California, in Sun Valley. And, so I was just like on the road, just shoeing horses all the time. And physically it just kind of got to me.
RW: When you’re going far away to shoe, then are you taking a trailer with all your equipment? How is that set up?
IG: Uh-huh. I have a trailer right here in the garage with all my equipment in it. I worked out of truck for a long time (a pickup truck); then I did go to a trailer. I have a trailer and it has a forge and it’s got my anvil and I’ve got drill presses and grinders, and shoe racks. It’s really pretty cool, you know. So I can just go there and open that thing up and I have everything I want right there. Because when I would go to Las Vegas, say, I would always shoe at least 30 horses, so you have to carry a lot of inventory because it’s all different sizes and stuff like that. Then go from there to Sun Valley, or whatever. And I still did that for quite a while after Joanne and I got married.
But it finally physically took a toll on me. My hands – I have no cartilage left in my hands, and my bones are flipped over, and I have arthritis in my joints; I have five compressed discs in my back, and my right knee is going to have to be replaced. But I just keep going because I think I’ve earned the right to do what I want do [laughs]. That sounds kind of odd, don’t it? I mean I think a lot of guys would just – well, and I have known a lot of shoers over the years that, you know, finally they just lay down and they won’t do anymore because I guess they can’t take the pain, or whatever. But I just can’t stop doing what I love to do. I’ve been semi-retired for three years and it about drove me crazy.
RW: So it sounds like you’re shoeing still, a little bit here and there?
IG: Yeah. You know, here’s the thing I think about being a cowboy, it’s this feeling of pride, accomplishment. To me, I think you honestly feel like you’re just a little bit more of a man than the average man. So when you reach that point in your life where you can’t continue to be that cowboy you’ve always been, it’s devastating: to my ego, to the way I felt about myself. I felt like you know, I can’t be what I’ve always been. It was hard, it was very hard. And now, even though I don’t do nearly what I used to do – I used to day work as a cowboy for Basin Land and Livestock (up here on the mountain and out here), you know stuff like that – even though I don’t do that anymore, at least I’m still out there Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 17
putting my hands on a horse everyday. And I still do a little training, Joanne and I. I’ve taught her a lot about training horses and she’s really become a hand, believe me.
RW: Oh, that’s a compliment.
IG: For a woman, I’ll tell you what – she can sit a horse. And I remember one time she said – because she would always have me get on her horses and warm them up. I’d say, you know, “You need to learn how to train your own horse.”
“Well I don’t want to be a horse trainer; I don’t need to know how to train a horse.” And I said, “Well, yes you do because in order to make them work correctly you’ve got to know the mechanics.”
And so it’s been fun teaching her that. And I love to teach. Over the years I’ve probably taught 50 guys how to shoe horses because I love to teach. And I love to give riding lessons. I love everything that’s involved with that lifestyle and I’m not afraid to teach people what I know.
RW: One of the things that’s really intriguing me about what you’re saying is this fact of knowing what’s important. You’re talking about the respect that you give to other people on site.
IG: Yes.
RW: And knowing what’s important to you.
IG: Yeah. Like with my family, I think I deserve a certain amount of respect, like you say, because I give that same respect. You know, like I have an older daughter that we never spoke for eight years. Everybody [said] “Well why don’t you go talk to your daughter?” Because her mother and I got divorced, well she decided to take a side and that’s strictly up to her, but I’m her father and she should respect me enough. Why should I go to her and make amends? And this went on for eight years until we finally broke the ice. And everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re too stubborn, and you’re too this.” And I say, “No, it’s not a matter of being stubborn, it’s a matter of respect.” I’m the father [laughs].
And I’m that way with people in general. You know, if you don’t respect me then you don’t have to have anything to do with me. Hopefully I’ll never do anything disrespectful toward you or your family or anything else because I’m just not that way. My friends that have been cowboys their whole lives, you know what? They’re that way. There isn’t a one of them that I wouldn’t do any kind of a deal with just a handshake because I know we have enough respect for each other that that’s the way it would be.
RW: You just said that Joanne’s quite a hand. Can you tell me what is a good hand?
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 18
IG: Well somebody that knows the mechanic; we’re talking horses in general here—somebody that knows the mechanics of a horse. You know, I used to think that everybody could learn the mechanics of a horse, but they can’t.
RW: Why not?
IG: Well, because they just – between understanding it in their mind and putting it in their hands – there is so much feel with a horse. Okay, so like basically the mechanics are the bit controls the face, the reins control the shoulders, and your legs control the body of the horse. So everything in training is to build lightness. You know, there’s so many maneuvers, like the shoulder in, shoulder out – which is [??] movements. Pivot on the forehand, and pivot on the haunch, you know, getting them light in the face. But it is knowing when to let go and when they are responding. So to me a good hand is somebody that has feel and can sit up on a horse and understands the mechanics of what makes them work. And there’s not very many women – I mean there’s a lot of women, you know, that can ride – but, I don’t think there’s that many women – I don’t think there’s that many men, to be honest with you – that really understand the mechanics of a horse and what a great animal they are.
If you train them and ride them they way God intended them to move [laughs] – we’re not trying to teach them anything they don’t already know. Boy, you get me on this horse training thing and I’ll be going on and on and on.
JG: No, but I think it’s a respect for the horse.
IG: I have a deep love and a deep respect. And here’s what happens with a horse: they’re pretty smart, but they’re not the world’s smartest animal. So it’s like, “I’m going to teach you this and I’m going to show you. And you might fight me a little bit and I might have to spank you, but I still love you and I don’t want to hurt you, but I will spank you if I have to.” So, this whole training thing is a scope that’s brought clear out here, and everything comes right down to right above the saddle horn. So I think the reason I love horses so much is because I’ve seen so many of them that come from these, you know, wild whatever. And then all of a sudden – you know, our horses are so responsive that if you turn your body and look over your shoulder they’ll turn that direction.
RW: Um-hmm. I hate to say this, but –
IG: That’s an amazing animal; that’s an amazing animal, you know?
RW: Right. It’s like the cliché of being “one” with whatever. And it sounds like what you’re saying to me is you and the animal become as one.
IG: Well of course you do, of course you do; yeah. But like I say, the biggest thing to being a good hand, as far as I’m concerned, is the feel. You know how much pressure does it take to make this thing happen. Like when you put a spur on a horse, you don’t just take that spur and go boing! You know? You sit it on there and lift until the horse moves, and then Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 19
you let go, you see. And knowing that feel, knowing if that horse moves that far, let go. And then you just take this and it’s just this huge scope and you bring it all down to this little, teeny, refined, responsive animal that’s almost thinking exactly what you’re thinking, even though they’re not; they’re responding to your body movements – and ever so slight. I mean to me, that’s the most fascinating animal there is in the world [laughs].
JG: And that horse might [??]
IG: Yeah, see when I grew up – you know like we talked about animals being tools?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: Horses were tools, they weren’t pets; and they’re still not pets to me. I have a deep respect and love for them, they’re not pets; they’re large animals with a huge amount of power and not very many smarts. But they are a tool to do a job. When they continue not to be able to do that job, or refuse to do it – [makes cutting sound] they’re gone and you replace them with another one. Because they are tools of the trade, just like everything a cowboy wears. You go to the Poetry Gathering and you’ll see the scarves and the cuffs and all this stuff. And you just wonder, “Gee, I wonder what all that’s for?” But every particular article of clothing that they wear has a meaning.
RW: Like what?
IG: Well, like a scarf for instance. Silk scarves are made for in the winter time to keep the heat in, okay? The other thing is, to tie your hat on in a wind storm; put it over your face to keep the dust out of your face, you know. The cuffs, the leather cuffs: to keep from tearing your arms off. I used to wear them when I was shoeing sometimes. The long sleeve shirts: I took Joanne to Oklahoma with me one time and before we left I says, “You can’t dress like that.” And she goes – I said, “You’ve got to dress just like me.” And she goes well –
RW: Joanne’s laughing right now.
IG: Yeah. We’re going its 100 degrees and the humidity is 100%, what are you talking about? And I said, “Just, you’ll understand.”
JG: I had tank tops.
IG: So I went and bought her a great big hat, a shirt. I said, “You button that collar to the top and you wear that long sleeve shirt, okay?” So we got down there on that ranch in Oklahoma and every cowboy there – she looked around and every cowboy there was dressed just like I was, for a reason: to keep that sun off your body. Some of the other people that were dressed like she wanted to dress – heat exhaustion, passing out, you know.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 20
So there’s a reason why we wear these clothes. The high top boots is more of a Texas style because of snakes. I don’t know, the only reason I ever tucked my pants in my boots my whole life is because my dad did. I never even owned a straw hat until I met Joanne. I wore a felt hat summer and winter because a felt hat won’t blow off like a straw hat. So with everything I did, day work ranching or whatever. These guys would come out there in them straw hats and the next thing I know they’d be out just a sailing across there. There goes that hat; and mine was right where I put it. So there’s a reason for all that.
RW: I’ve heard from other cowboys that you can read a cowboy by clothing.
IG: Oh, definitely!
RW: But also by nuances – you’re sizing somebody up before they ever open their mouth?
IG: Oh yeah, oh definitely! [Laughs]
RW: Both of you folks are shaking your heads and laughing right now.
IG: Yeah.
RW: So what are you shaking your head about? What are you laughing at? What are you thinking? How are you reading somebody?
IG: By the clothes they wear.
IG: Yeah. You know, that’s interesting to me because I can look at a guy and he can have a hat on, and to most people he would look just like a cowboy. And I’ve done this, I’ve said you know, “There’s a drugstore cowboy right there.” And they always prove me correctly. But if I see a guy that I think is a cowboy and I go talk to him for a minute, and especially if I shake hands with him because I’ll tell you what, there ain’t no sissy hands when you start shaking hands with a cowboy. And it always becomes this [makes squeezing sound] who can squeeze their hand the hardest. And I don’t have the grip that I used to, but I don’t have sissy hands either, you know what I mean?
And then most of them, especially if you have your wife or your children with you, they’re very, very respectful, very quiet. If you walk in there and the guy’s got the hat on and he’s running his mouth off, you know, he can say two or three words and I can tell you whether he really knows what he’s talking about or not. I’m not nearly the cowboy that a lot of these -- I mean I have friends and I’ve been around guys in my life that they’re like the ultimate cowboy: they can ranch rope, they can ride broncs, they can do all this stuff. And I look up to them guys. And I’ll admit, I’m not all that. But I’ve concentrated on training and shoeing my whole life.
JG: You rode bareback.
IG: Yeah, I rode bareback horses for quite a few years. I don’t know why, but [laughs]. Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 21
RW: Well in your life working with other ranch families, with your family –
IG: Um-hmm, um-hmm.
RW: And then shoeing – what kind of experience has it been to watch other people with horses? You’re shoeing a horse for somebody, so they’re paying you, but yet probably I would assume some of the time you’re running into people who maybe aren’t as respectful to their horse or careful with their horse.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: How was that?
IG: Or unknowledgeable – that’s the biggest thing you run into is lack of knowledge. And I don’t say anything unless somebody asks. I never try to be offensive, but I will offer advice. The thing is I can pretty much tell you how a horse is to ride if I pick their feet up and start shoeing them.
RW: Explain that, I don’t know what that means.
IG: Because if they’re pushing against me or walking away from me, that tells me that horse is basically the same way to ride. You know, so if they’re pushing on me and trying to take their feet away, they’re just kind of like, “Nyeh, I don’t want to do this.” Well if you get on them they’re going to be the same way.
RW: Okay.
IG: You see what I mean?
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: But you get them ones that will just stand there and pick that foot up and hold it, and they’re very respectful – they’re that way to ride.
RW: Is that because of the nature of an animal or because of training of the animal?
IG: Training and genetics. I mean in the livestock industry, whether it’s cattle or horses, genetics is just such a huge part of the whole thing. That’s why genetically they’ve gone to the Angus cattle because of the birthrate: the heads are smaller, the birthrate is less, and then they develop quicker. So it’s all genetics; and horses are the same way, and people are the same way. It’s all genetics as far as I’m concerned.
RW: So there’s a big knowledge, a skill set every occupation [has] whether a nurse, or a folklorist, a rancher, a cowboy, farrier – there’s huge skill sets. And within those skill sets I’ve always noticed that some people have a higher efficiency than others.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 22
IG: That’s just the way people are in general.
RW: Right.
IG: That’s the way horses are, you know.
RW: But I’m just [wondering] listening to you [about this]; before we were talking about all the nuances: the respect and the knowledge to understand a horse.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: But then beyond the horse, then what you’re bringing to it is also your knowledge about that breed.
IG: Um-hmm, exactly.
RW: It has always been fascinating to me, for such a respectful, quiet group – not a real lot of bragging going on, for the most part, around people from outside. I always think, “These are people that should be bragging all the time! They know so much.”
IG: They tell stories.
JG: Yes.
RW: Talk about that to me.
IG: That’s what poetry is.
RW: Okay.
IG: Cowboys tell stories. Somebody will say – some subject will come up and somebody will say, “Oh yeah, I remember when I worked on such and such’s ranch.” Or, “I was working and this happened to me.” So you start relating these stories because that same thing has probably happened to everybody there.
And what poetry is, is those stories put to rhyme; period. So cowboys brag, but they do it by telling a story. Like, “Oh yeah, you got bucked – well let me tell you this story about, you know, the horse that I rode!” So you’re telling a story, but you’re bragging [laughs]! So there you go.
RW: Awesome. You’re teaching too, don’t you think, with those stories?
IG: Oh, sure you are. Oh yeah.
JG: And traditions.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 23
IG: Yeah.
JG: They kind of pass on a tradition and that. Like I’ve asked him about different poems that will mention something, and I’ll say, “So what is that?” And it’s some nuance or some tradition that a cowboy has, that nobody else understands.
IG: You know it’s like “Don’t put your hat on the bed.”
JG: Yeah, that was my [??]
IG: That’s a superstitious thing. You know, cowboys never put their hat on the bed. I can’t think of really that many now, but there’s traditionally the way things are done. Take for example, when I grew up we never put anything – the mother cows would go in a chute, and they’d get wormed and vaccinated, and check their teeth or whatever. But the calves were always headed and heeled and drug to the fire. That’s a tradition.
See, and that’s changed in the ranching industry now because it’s so huge. Now they run them in a chute and do everything – all the calves are run through a chute. Well our philosophy always was, “The less stress you can put on a calf, the better they do.” So if you separate all these calves over here for that period of time, and work them and stress them out, they don’t do as good as if you just ride in there, throw a loop on them, drag them to the fire, do your thing, let them run right back to their mom; a lot less stress.
And these big outfits that do everything in a corral and a chute, they’ve got to go out and round up all them cows and bring them into one area. We’d just go to an area and when we had enough there, we’d build a fire, rope them, brand them, do whatever we needed to do, and then we’d go to the next one. See what I mean?
RW: Right.
IG: So that part of the ranching industry has changed big time, that traditional part of it. I know my cousin wherever he was, he always tried to stay with that tradition. I think that’s maybe one thing that’s really died in the modern day ranches is, they chase them with four wheelers now, they get them so wild you can’t even catch them. They’re trying to round them up on four wheelers. Being on horseback and doing things the old way I think is tradition that’s been lost.
[END Tape 1 of 2: B]
[BEGIN Tape 2 of 2: A]
JG: I’d have to ask him “What do you mean by that? Why do you have to be respectful to the cook?” You know. We all sit and talk about, “you need to be respectful to that cook.” I always thought it was just because they were cooking your dinner, but there’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to that chuck wagon and what goes on around it and what doesn’t, is what the big thing is: what doesn’t.
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 24
IG: You know, and that comes down to a respect thing again. Be respectful. To me that’s so much a part of life.
JG: Right.
IG: Be respectful.
RW: Well I remember one of my first [Cowboy Poetry] Gatherings, because of my professional training to kind of pay attention to cultural nuances (and laughter is one of them); I remember at one of the first Gatherings I was in the audience and someone was reciting a poem (it was somewhat humorous), and there was parts that I could understand were funny; and then there would be parts that I didn’t understand why everyone was laughing.
IG: [Laughing]
RW: Because I was outside culturally –
IG: Yeah.
RW: --I didn’t have the information to know why someone was doing a numb skull thing.
IG: Um-hmm.
JG: What’s so funny?
RW: Yeah.
JG: What is that?
RW: Right.
IG: See, I went to the very first poetry gathering that was ever in Elko, Nevada.
RW: Did you?
IG: Before it was even recognized, because I was out with my cousin. I don’t know if you want to record this or not.
RW: I’ve got it on, we’re going.
IG: Anyway, so we were out to the ranch and it was you know, later in the fall and we were getting ready to wean calves. So he’s like, “Do you want to go into town tonight? They’re having this little get together at the Stockmen’s and guys are going to tell stories, you know, and play the guitar and do stuff like that.” And I’m like, “Well yeah, let’s go see that.” So we go into Elko, we go into Stockmen’s and we go upstairs and there’s just a Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 25
bunch of cowboys sitting around singing and talking and telling poems. And that’s where the very first poetry gathering in Elko, Nevada started, was right there at the Stockmen’s. And from there it’s just – I mean we went this year and I’m just like, “Whoa, this has sure changed.” You know.
JG: I think we were overwhelmed.
IG: But like I say, that’s where it’s all originated from. I’ve written a lot of poetry and I’m not a poet, by any means. But when I did write a poem it was about an experience; you either try to make it funny or glamorous or heart-warming or whatever and try to make the words rhyme. So yeah, it’s just stories; bragging stories.
RW: I love what you said about that cowboys do brag; they do it through stories.
IG: Well of course they do! They tell stories, yeah, sure they do. Men have to brag! [Laughs] You know, that’s just the way we are; that’s our ego! We can always rope better than this guy, or ride a bucking horse better than he can, or you know whatever. That’s just the way men are.
RW: Joanne mentioned that you did some rodeoing.
IG: Um-hmm.
RW: When did you do that?
IG: Well I started when I was about 18, riding bareback horses, and I rode until I was about 26.
RW: Did you ride around the circuit?
IG: Uh-huh, yeah; semi-pro rodeo cowboy’s deal, you know.
RW: Uh-huh.
IG: My dad was a charter member of the PRCA and he was a saddle bronc rider. And he broke his back (in Tremonton, actually) when he was a young man. You know, back in them days they didn’t have the bucking chutes like we have now; they just had this home made deal and they’d run them in, and run a pole behind them. When the horse turned to come out, in the early days of rodeo, they would all throw their hats in the air and holler. Well when they did, this horse went to come out and when he jumped he come up on his hind feet and come right over, and that pole hit my dad right in the back and broke his back.
RW: Oh!
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 26
IG: Well I always wanted to be a saddle bronc rider because my dad was a saddle bronc rider, but I never could afford the saddle. So I started getting on bareback horses. And it’s a tough sport. And back in them days we didn’t wear protective vests, and we didn’t wear these big neck braces. These guys now, they got their arms all wrapped up. It’s changed a lot. I was never really good at it, but I just did it because it made me feel good, it made me feel like I was tough and a man.
RW: I’ve always wondered about rodeo because it really is a concentration of showing expert behavior.
IG: Uh-huh.
RW: I mean it’s simple, small amounts of ranch life compressed. Can you talk a little bit about your feelings about the rodeo?
IG: Well, yeah. You know, every event in rodeo originated on a ranch. In the early days just about every cowboy that rode whatever come from a ranch background, and that’s not the case anymore. That’s changed, just like everything else in our life. Now you’ve got these guys coming from – the ranch cowboy and the rodeo cowboy are two different people, as far as I’m concerned. The way they dress, the way they think, the way they look, the way they – everything.
You can tell a rodeo cowboy from a ranch cowboy. They’re all called cowboys, but they’re two different deals. So now you have the guy that can come from New York City and be a bronc rider, and probably never ridden a horse prior to that time, or has no idea what it’s even like to live on a ranch. You know, they’re doing it because they have a talent and they want to make money. So it’s really changed from the way it used to be.
RW: Let’s talk about the way it used to be.
IG: Well it used to be every cowboy that I ever rodeoed with grew up on a ranch. And we’d all ridden bucking horses, just in a little bit type of different deal. And there wasn’t all this money and all this fame, and all this kind of stuff in it, like there is now. I mean especially now, I mean for years and years you’d starve to death if you tried to be a rodeo cowboy, you know. We just did it because it made us feel tough [laughs].
RW: But in a way of also showing your skills.
IG: Yeah, oh yeah. You have to have a skill, yeah.
RW: People that have similar –
IG: But you know what? Believe me, the majority of guys that ever tried to rodeo do it because it makes them feel tough. And a lot of them find out that they’re not quite as tough as they thought they were; not that they’re not tough, but they’re just not made out to do that particular thing. Now it’s so scientific you know, the whole art of riding a Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 27
bucking horse or a bareback horse, you can go to a school and they got all this stuff figured out, and all this technique, and all this new stuff. You know, it’s just changed so much since I was --. And the horses buck harder now than they used to. But it’s just like the ranching business: it’s just changed so much.
But the rodeo cowboy, like I say, is a completely (for the majority) different person than the ranch cowboy was; the lifestyle. It’s just completely different because ranching – ranch cowboys are a dying breed; there’s not many left.
RW: Um-hmm. Have you ever been involved in shoeing rodeo stock?
IG: You don’t shoe rodeo stock.
RW: Why not?
IG: Because there’s no need to put shoes on them. Most of them would kick your head off if you tried.
JG: [??]
IG: Yeah, I mean I’ve shod every – I mean I’ve shod mules for the United States Marine Corps, I’ve done every kind of breed that you can imagine over the years.
JG: Barrel horses you’ve shod.
IG: Barrel horses, yeah. But them rodeo horses they never because the foot is like your fingernail: it will grow out so far, and if you catch it on something it will break off.
RW: Um-hmm.
IG: Horses hooves the same way: they’ll grow out so far and then break off. But most rodeo horses, most rodeo horses are horses that for some reason cannot be broke, or like to buck, or they’re bred to buck, or whatever. Well they don’t start handling their legs when they’re babies, like we do for our saddle horses, see.
RW: Right.
IG: So you reach down there to touch that leg and you’re in big trouble. You touch most of them rodeo horses anywhere and they’re going to nail you. So to me they’re even wilder than a wild horse.
RW: Well were kind of coming down to the end here. Is there some things that I’m not thinking to ask you, that you’ve been thinking about to share?
JG: What did your mother do while your dad was doing all this stuff? I was always –
Ranch Family Oral History Project: Irv Glenn Page 28
IG: She baked bread, you know. We had a wood cook stove and she’d bake bread and – I don’t know what she did.
JG: I always thought that she rode along and did this stuff.
IG: Oh no, no. None of the – my aunts on either side of my family – I never, ever seen them on a horse; this is man’s work. You have babies and cook, and we’ll ride the horses.
RW: Did your mom have a garden?
IG: No, no. I don’t know what she did. She liked to read; she read a lot.
JG: Played piano.
IG: Just ending up this whole thing, I got to tell you this little story about when I was a young boy. My dad come out one morning and he said (and I think this kind of is the – I don’t know, maybe all cowboys or all ranch people don’t think this way, but this has always kind of stuck in my mind), “I want you to go out there this morning and get on that tractor, and hook it up to that digger and go do this.” You know, I’m like 12 and I just looked at him and I says, “I’m a cowboy, I’m no farmer.” And he looked at me and he says, “You’re anything I tell you you’re going to be today.” [All laughing] And I left out a few words, but basically that’s what it was.
RW: Right. [All laughing]
You’re clay in his hands.
IG: Yeah, um-hmm.
RW: Joanne our visit has been so enjoyable; thank you so much. Would you mind if we take a gander at your –
IG: Shoeing?
RW: Well yeah.
IG: Sure, sure!
RW: And I can take some pictures?
IG: Sure, yeah.
RW: Well let me turn this off.
[End recording.]